EDUCATION: 



TO WHOM DOES IT BELONG? 



SECOND EDITION, 



WITH 



A Rejoinder to Critics. 



By the Rev. THOMAS BOUQUILLON, D. D., 

Professor of Moral Theology at the Catholic University of America, Washington, D, C. 



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BALTIMORE: 

JOHN MURPHY & CO. 

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COPTBIGHT, 1892, BY JOHN MTJRPHY & CO. 



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PREFACE. 



In these pages theoretical principles only are dealt with. These are 
exposed from a Catholic standpoint. The practical application of the 
principles does not come within the purpose of the writer, it is not his 
office to give directions. He has written this pamphlet at the request 
of ecclesiastical superiors. They deemed that a clear exposition of the 
principles underlying the school question would be both useful and op- 
portune at this hour, when the practical difficulties in which it is involved 
have become national concerns ; were it only to show that in the matter 
of education as in all other social concerns the true doctrine of the church 
is opposed neither to liberty well understood nor to the just prerogatives 
of the state.- 

The writer makes no pretense to originality. He professes to walk in 
the footsteps of the great theologians, especially of Saint Thomas. He 
has been guided by the light of the Encyclicals of Leo XIII on civil 
power, the constitution of states, liberty and the condition of the laboring 
classes. He could not omit, without sacrificing completeness, certain 
delicate points of detail on which Catholics are not in agreement. On 
these he has frankly expressed his opinion and has given for them what 
he thinks good reasons. He begs the reader to give them serious con- 
sideration. 



EDUCATION: TO WHOM DOES IT BELONG? 



We reduce the subject matter of our paper to the following four 
questions : right to educate, mission to educate, authority over- 
education, liberty of education. Though these four aspects of the 
educational question touch at many points, we prefer to treat them 
separately. This plan may force on us some repetitions, but in com- 
pensation, it will enable us to avoid the ambiguities and confusion 
that too often involve in darkness this important subject. 

We will examine these four questions from the point of view of 
the individual, the family, the state, the church. For man is not an 
isolated being, he is a social being ; in society he finds the helps he 
needs for the development of intellect, the formation of character and 
the means of subsistence. Now there are three essential societies 
instituted by God to work harmoniously in conducting man to his 
perfection and his end ; the domestic, the civil, the religious. There- 
fore, we must determine what are the reciprocal rights, duties, and 
powers of these three societies in the intellectual formation of man. 
To do this safely we shall not take for our only guide a priori argu- 
ments, but we shall also seek to find a basis in the canonical and 
civil law of Christendom, moreover we shall look for light in the les- 
sons of history. Principles, laws, facts, in these we shall search for 
the solution of the questions under consideration. 

As to principles, we acknowledge that they are to be found best 
exposed in the more recent publicists, rather than in the older writers 
who lived before the modern era of the separation of Church and State. 
We quote in preference Taparelli, Saggio teoretico di Diritfo naturale, 
diss. 7, and Esame eriiico degli ordini representativi, torn, i, p. 314; 
Card. Zigliara, Phil, mor., p. ii, lib. ii, c. 1, a. 5 ; Costa-Eosetti, 
Inst Eth. et jur. not. thes. 175, 176; Hammerstein, De Eccl. et 
Statu, p. 146, 158, 181 ; Sauv6, Questions religieuses et sociales, c. 10; 

6 



Cavaguis, Inst. Jur. publ. et EccL, lib. iv, c. 1. Mention must also 
be made of Coppola, Sull Diritto della Chiesa in ordine al publico 
Insegnamento ; Riess, JDer moderne Staat und die Christliche Schule ; 
Jansen, Be Facultate Doeendi ; Conway, The respective rights and 
duties of family, state and chwch in regard to education ; Robiano, 
De Jure Ecclesiae in Universitates 8tudiorum; and finally the anony- 
mous work of two French priests, V^cole neutre en face de la 
TMologie. 

As to laws, besides the Decretals, lib. v, tit. 5, De Magistris, we 
have consulted the collection of Councils by Hardouin, and its worthy 
continuation the collection of Maria Laach, the Capitularies of Charle- 
•magne, the ordinances of past governments, the two collections of 
Mgr. Roskovany, De Ecclesiae independentia and Romanus Pon- 
tifex, and notably the acts of Pius IX and Leo XIII, the decrees 
of the papal congregations, and finally the Schema de Ecclesia, 
prepared by the pontifical theologians of the Council of the Vatican, 
though not discussed by the Council. 

As to facts, we shall have recourse to Thomassin, Anc. et nouv. 
disc, de VEglise, p. ii, lib. i, c. 92; Claude Joly, Traits hist, des 
Ecoles ^piscopales et monastiques ; L6on Maitre, Des J^coles ipisco- 
pales et m.onastiques de I' Occident; Stallaert and Vanderhaeghe, De 
^instruction puhlique au moyen age; Lebon, Histoire de Venseigne- 
ment populaire; Du Boulay, Hist. Univ. Paris; Jourdain, Histoire 
de V University de Paris au dix-septiime et dix-huitieme si^cle ; Bour- 
bon, La licence d'enseigner et le role de V^coldtre au moyen age ; Karl, 
Ueber die alten und neuen schulen; Denifle, Die Universitdten des 
mittel alters. 

The history of education and of schools is to-day the occupation of 
a great many erudite scholars in many lands. The Polybihlion gives 
in vols. 10, 11, 12, years 1873 and '74, a bibliography of the sub- 
ject which is worthy of regard ; still later we find another bibliog- 
raphy in the report of the bibliographical and international congress 
held in Paris from the 3rd to the 7th of April, 1888. 



I. 

The Eight to Educate. 

Right, considered as distinct from law, justice, authority, is a faculty 
moral and inviolable of doing, exacting, possessing, disposing of 
something. — We will not stop to explain the various kinds of Right : 
natural and positive, innate and acquired, absolute and hypothetical, 
primary and secondary, independent and subordinate, alienable and 
inalienable, direct and indirect, right the exercise of which is neces- 
sary and right the exercise of which is free. One remark : when 
we say that Right is an inviolable faculty, we mean that Right, as long 
as it is in existence, must be respected, and may be defended even 
by force ; but we do not mean that a Right may not be regulated, 
modified, restricted, even suspended. Evidently an acquired right 
may be taken away, and many natural rights may be, if not entirely 
suppressed, at least regulated, modified, or restricted in various ways. 
— Only a rational being is capable of possessing a right ; such a being, 
as possessing a right, is properly called a Person ; if the one who 
possesses the right is an individual, the person is physical ; if the one 
who possesses the right is a corporation, a college, the person is moral. 
Let us now consider the right of teaching, or of education, in the 
individual, the family, the state, the church. 

{a). The Right of Educating in the Individual. 

By individuals we mean not only jnen isolated, but also private 
associations other than the family, the state, and the church. — A theory 
termed "liberal," at present in vogue in different countries, especially 
in Germany, rests on the assumption that the right of education in 
individuals can be only a positive right, delegated by the sovereign 
authority, because education is a public, a social function.^ — Against 
this theory, which is as dangerous as it is false, we affirm that every 
individual, every legitimate association has by nature the right of 
educating. 

' Victor Cousin, the philosopher, wrote in the Journal des Debate, May 4, 1844 : 
"The state has the right to confer the power of educating, for to educate is not a natural 
right, but a public and social right." 



8 

And 1° we say that the right of educating belongs naturally to 
every physical person. What is education ? In a large sense it is to 
comnaunicate what we know to one who does not know. In a 
restricted sense it is to communicate after a methodical and continu- 
ous fashion knowledge relative to religion, morals, letters, sciences, 
the arts ; or, it is to instruct and train childhood and youth. But 
every man has the right to communicate the truth, and to communi- 
cate it after the fashion that is most efficacious and best adapted to those 
who wish to receive it. For this he needs no mandate from govern- 
ment.^ To allow to every citizen the right of expressing opinions by 
speech or by the press, and at the same time to deny him, as is done in 
some countries, the right of teaching is a monstrous contradiction. 

We say 2° that the right of educating belongs naturally to every 
moral person, or corporation. The reason is plain. If every indi- 
vidual has the right of teaching what he is capable of teaching to 
whomsoever will accept his teaching, a collection or legitimate asso- 
ciation of men endowed with a like capability must have the like right. 
Whatever the lesser may do, that same with stronger reason the 
greater may do. If the isolated man possesses such a right, men 
collectively possess it also. Therefore the right of educating is not 
a right exclusively individual, but a right that may belong to many 
persons associated and may be exercised by them in soliclo. That an 
association may have the natural right to teach whatever is the allow- 
able o^bject of teaching, it is only necessary that it be lawful and 
composed of men fitted to educate.^ 

The right to educate, therefore, which we attribute to individuals 
is not absolute and unlimited, it is essentially limited to the true, the 
good, the expedient. No one has by nature the right to teach error, 
vice, or even truths that are injurious and inopportune. — Neither is 
it an independent right : the right of individuals in education is 
essentially subordinate to the action of legitimate authority, civil 
and religious. Doubtless no authority may arbitrarily suppress this 
right, but authority may for sufficient reasons regulate it, for instance, 
by determining what are the due conditions of worth and capability 

' Suarez, Defide, disp. 18, s. s. : "Jus docendi ignorantes est quasi connaturale cui- 
cumque homini." 

^ The natural right of association is openly asserted by Leo XIII in the last enc. 
Berum novarum: "Privatas societates inire concessum est homini jure naturae." 



9 

in the teacher, of which more shall be said later on.^ — Finally it is 
not an exclusive right, but coexists with the rights of the family, the 
state and the church. 

This natural right to educate which we attribute to individuals and 
associations has always been acknowledged by the Church. The 
Lateran Council, in the pontificate of Alexander III, prescribed that 
no one shall forbid the right of teaching to him who is capable thereof. 
The same Pope rigorously ordained that all who are capable and 
learned and wish to open schools, might do so without undergoing 
any hindrances or exactions whatsoever.^ Facts are not wanting to 
strengthen our position. The history of Abelard shows that he set 
up his school where he pleased. Dr. Denifle tells us that many of 
the great mediaeval universities were formed spontaneously without 
the intervention of church or state : the universities of Padua and 
Yerceil were brought into existence by an exodus of students from 
Bologna. The reader who desires further information on this point 
may consult Taparelli, Saggio teoretico di Diritto naturale, diss. 7, 
c. 3, not. 140 ; Sauve, Questions Religieuses et Sociales, c. x, a. 1, 
§ 4; Cavagnis, Inst. Jur. publ., lib. iv, n. 107. We shall often 
cite these three writers. Taparelli is recognized by all as a high 
scientific authority. Mgr. Sauv6, who had the honor of being one of 
the theologians commissioned by Pius IX, to prepare the schemata 
of the Council of the Vatican, and afterwards became the first rector 
of the Catholic university of Angers, devotes his declining years to 
the composing of works of the highest order, such as the one we have 
named. Mgr. Cavagnis is at present professor of Canon Law in the 
Roman seminary. 

(6). The Bight of the Family to Educate. 

We speak not of a general right such as every individual possesses, 
but of a right special and proper to parents. No one can call into 
doubt that parents have by nature the right of giving education to 
their offspring. The end of conjugal society, one of the reasons for 

^ Were we asked how the natural right to educate may be regulated, restricted, 
modified, we should refer the questioner to the luminous distinctions of Suarez, De 
Legib., lib. ii, c. 13, and we should ask him in turn, how does it happen that the 
natural right of contract is modified in many ways by civil and ecclesiastical laws. 

'See lib. v, of the decretals of Gregory IX, tit. 5, de Magistris, c. Quoniam and 
c. Quanta gallicana. 



10 

its stability, is the education no less than the procreation of children. 
Parents are called by God not only to generate children to bodily life, 
but also to form their minds ; therefore they are entitled to be the 
first instructors of their children, themselves, or through teachers of 
their own choosing. The child belongs to the parents, as S. Thomas 
very clearly explains in the second part of the Summa. "The child, 
he says, is naturally somewhat of the father, who generated him. At 
first he is not separate from the parent as to the body, as long as he is 
contained within the mother's womb. Later when he has come forth 
from the womb, he remains, before coming to the use of free will, 
under the direction of his parents, in a kind of spiritual womb, so to 
speak. . . . Thus it is a natural right, that the child before coming 
to the age of reason, be entirely governed by the parents. It would 
be against natural justice that the child, before coming to the age of 
reason, be torn from the guardianship of the parents, or disposed of 
acainst their will."^ — Parents may exercise this right either separately 
or collectively, that is to say, in association. If one father can give 
education to his children, twenty fathers may associate to give educa- 
tion to their collected children. For number, as Taparelli observes, 
does not change the nature of things.^ This right of parents is sacred, 
no one may suppress or diminish it ; for it springs from a paramount 
duty. Leo XIII insists on this in his Encyclical to the Bishops of 
Bavaria : " Hisce in officiis simul cum procreatione liberorum sus- 
ceptis, noverint patres-familias totidem jura inesse secundum naturam 
et sequitatem, atque esse ejusmodi de quibus nihil liceat sibi remittere, 
nihil cuivis hominum potestati detrahere, quum oflficiis solvi quibus 
homo teneatur ad Deum sit per hominem nefas." ^ 

However, this right is neither unlimited nor absolute ; it does not 
extend to error or vice; the parent has only the right to communi- 
cate to the child by himself or by others knowledge that is allowable. 
— Moreover this right is not independent, but subjected to the control 
of authority religious and civil within the proper sphere of each. 
Hence, while parents may and should give moral and religious educa- 
tion to their children, the church has the right and duty to scrutinize 
and guide such education where faith and morals are concerned. On 
the other hand the State, within the sphere of its powers, has a right 
of inspection over the education imparted by the family, the right to 

1 S. Thomas, 2^ 2^ q. x, art. 12. * Esame Critico, 1. c. 

»Leo XIII. Ency. "Officio Sanctissimo," 22 Dec, 1887. 



11 

prevent it from becoming a source of moral poisoning. Thus the 
judge may take a child from corrupt and corrupting parents who 
train it up in crime. The supernatural good and the social good 
may necessitate and. demand a suspension of the exercise of parental 
authority by the ecclesiastical or civil authorities. It is well, how- 
ever, to remark that Church and State may infringe more easily on 
the right of educating inherent in the individual than on that belong- 
ing to the family. — Let us add with Taparelli,^ that the parental 
right has a natural tendency to diminution and undergoes changes in 
subject matter at least, as the needs of the child change. From this 
point of view we must admit a certain difference between the primary 
education of the child and the superior or special education of the 
grown boy and the young man. We will return to this point pres- 
ently. 

(c). The Right of the State to Educate. 

By the word " State " we understand not the people but the social 
authority. This authority, according to the various constitutions of 
nations, is vested either in one person or in an assembly; but essen- 
tially it is one and the same, and always and everywhere has the same 
rights and attributes.^ — Moreover, by the word " State " we under- 
stand in this matter of education authority in all its degrees, not 
only in the highest degree or the sovereign authority, but also in the 
lower degrees, such as the authority in provinces, counties, towns, 
districts. — Furthermore we suppose the distinction between the two 
societies, the religious and the civil, between the two powers, the 
political and the ecclesiastical, between the two spheres in which 
those powers have their movement, the sphere of temporal interests 
and the sphere of spiritual interests. Hence we do not inquire 
whether the State has the right of teaching religion, but we do ask 
if the State has the special and proper right of teaching human 
knowledge. We say special and proper right : for there can be no 
question of a vague and general right: it were unreasonable to 
refuse to the State that which is granted to every legitimate associa- 
tion. — Let us add that teaching, as far as the State is concerned therein, 
means establishing schools, appointing teachers, prescribing methods 

^ Saggio teoretico, n. 1569. 

^ In the last enc. Leo XIII while treating more particularly of the social problem 
exposes with great clearness the general rights and duties of the State. 



12 

and programmes of study : the State teaches in the same way as it 
governs and judges, viz., through delegates fitted for such functions. — 
Finally, we are inquiring what is the right of the State considered in 
itself, omitting the consideration of the conditions and circumstances 
under which it may prudently and legitimately use the right. 

These considerations being premised to obviate all equivocation, 
we affirm unhesitatingly, and in accord, as we think, with the prin- 
ciples of sound theology and philosophy, and with the testimony of 
the tradition of the Church, that it must be admitted, as the larger 
number of theologians do admit, that the State has the right to educate. 
The following reason, drawn from the very nature of things and, in 
our judgment, thoroughly apodictical will suffice. Civil authority 
has the right to use all legitimate temporal means it judges necessary 
for the attainment of the temporal common welfare, which is the end 
of civil society. Now among the most necessary means for the 
attainment of the temporal welfare of the commonwealth is the 
diffusion of human knowledge. Therefore, civil authority has the 
right to use the means necessary for the diffusion of such knowledge, 
that is to say, to teach it, or rather to have it taught by capable agents. 
We believe the major proposition of this argument cannot be denied, 
especially if it be kept in mind that we are speaking of temporal means 
that enter into the sphere of action of the State, and of legitimate means 
that trench on and wound no other right. With this double reserva- 
tion the right to an end evidently implies the right to the means. 
Neither can the minor proposition of the argument be: reasonably 
denied. You have but to look around you, you have but to consult 
history to be convinced that from the moral, social, political as well 
as material point of view, science, possessed in different degrees accord- 
ing to different conditions, is one of the primordial elements of pros- 
perity in any country. A nation needs citizens able to take interest 
in the commonwealth, workmen that are intelligent, surveyors that 
are skilful, physicians that are experienced, jurists that are learned. 
An ignorant people is a people inferior in agriculture, industry, arts, 
war. If you would have a people instructed, you must look to its 
instruction, and, if need be, establish and direct it. We look upon 
this conclusion as impregnable. We will merely add this further 
view, viz : that the civil power does necessarily teach in one way or 
another, as for instance, when it exercises legislative and judiciary 
powers ; for a law is an enlightenment, a teaching for the mind as 



13 

well as a direction for the will ; the sentence of a tribunal is likewise 
an educational agency ; and therefore the state as legislator and judge 
has in virtue of this double capacity the right of imparting education. 
We will produce facts and documents to show that all Christian 
nations have always held this opinion. How astonished Charle- 
magne would have been had he been told that he had no right to 
found schools ; how astonished the bishops of his time had such a 
doctrine been put before them ! Those very bishops were the men who, 
in the Council of Toul, exhorted princes as well as the ordinaries of 
dioceses to appoint everywhere teachers of divine and human learning; 
" Depreeandi sunt pii principes nostri, et omnes fratres et coepiscopi 
nostri instantissime comraonendi, ut, ubicumque Omnipotens Deus 
idoneos ad docendum donare dignetur, constituantur undique scholse 
publicse, ut utriusque eruditionis divinse videlicet et humanse in ecclesia 
Dei fructus valeat accrescere." ^ It is well known that many univer- 
sities arose in the Middle Ages in every catholic land. Their emi- 
nent historian, Fr. Denifle, divides them into four categories : those 
that were formed spontaneously, such as Paris, Bologna, Salerno, 
Oxford ; those that were formed by the Church ; those that owed 
their erection to the State : those in the foundation of which both 
Church and State combined. It stands recorded that previous to the 
year 1400 there had been founded by the civil authority alone not 
less than four universities in Italy, viz.: lArezzo, Siena, Naples, 
Treviso ; not less than five in Spain, viz : Valencia, Salamanca, 
Seville, Lerida, Huesca.^ Similar instances are not wanting in more 
modern times. But we desire to call attention to another order of 
facts. In the XVII century there were in the archdiocese of Spalatro 
free schools and communal, or as we should say, district schools ; in 
these latter instruction was given by salaried teachers, cleric or lay. 
The Bishop made no objection as to the legitimacy of these schools, 
but he desired to know from the Congregation of the Council if he 
could force the teachers of such schools to instruct the children and 
ruder pupils (pueros rudesque scholares) in the catechism. The Con- 
gregation in its answer, Aug. 17, 1688, does not protest against this 
system of schools, but declares that the Bishop should exhort the 
masters to teach religion and even that he may compel them to do it.^ 

1 Cone. Tullens. an. 859, c. 10. ^ 

* Denifle, op. cit., and Civilta Cattol. Serie xiv, torn 3. 

^ This answer is to bs found in Griraldi, in Bened. xrv, Inst, ix, in Cavagnis, op. 
cit., n. 27. 



14 

In our own century Leo XII by the bull Quod Bivina Sapieniia, 
Aug. 29, 1824, reorganized the public education of the pontifical 
states. Now the dispositions and the authentic interpretations of 
that bull suppose that the State has the right to educate. No doubt 
the care and guardianship of all that concerns faith and morals, 
belong to the Bishop or his delegate, but the school teachers are 
chosen by competitive examination which the communal magistrate 
publishes, the examination of the candidates is made in the presence 
of the magistrate. After the examination the municipal Council 
hears the report of the examiners and decides the choice of the 
teachers by a majority of votes given in secret balloting. The 
admission of children into the communal or public school belongs 
to the magistrates, to them also belong the duty and power of seeing 
to the execution of the regulations of discipline.^ Now the power of 
choosing teachers, of admitting children into the school is nothing 
else than the power of teaching by delegation. Finally we have yet 
to learn that any pope has ever declared that the State went beyond 
its right in founding schools, provided the instruction be organized in 
the spirit of Christianity. 

After studying the documents we have cited — and many more of 
a like tenor might be added — no one need wonder that the best and 
most serious publicists of our day explicitly acknowledge the right 
of the State to educate. Cardinal Zigliara affirms that nobody denies 
to the State the right to provide the best means for the intellectual 
and moral education of its subjects.^ Father Costa-Rosetti, a Jesuit, 
lays down the thesis that the State has the right to found and direct 
schools.^ Father de Hammerstein, another Jesuit, does not hesitate 
to assert that public schools may be established by the civil authority.^ 
To Mgr. Sauv6 the opinion denying to the State the right to educate 
does not seem probable.^ We will close this list of authorities by 
giving the opinion of the theologians commissioned by Pius IX to pre- 
pare the subject matter of the discussions of the Council of the Vatican. 
They intended to proclaim the right of the Church to watch over the 
education, religious and moral, of catholic children, but at the same 
time they most explicitly recognized the right of the State to educate. 

^ See Caterini, "Collectio legum et ordinationum de recta studiorum ordinatione," 
p. 229, and "Analecta Jur. pontif.," ser. n, col. 1730. 

' Phil, mor., 1. c, n. 7. ^ Inst. Eth. et Jur. nat., 1. c. * De Eccl. et Statu, p. 146. 
'Questions Eeligieuses et Sociales, p. 271. 



15 

Here are the words of the proposed schema on this point : " Non 
negatur jus potestatis laicse providendi institutioni in litteris ac 
scientiis ad suum legitimum finem et ad bonum sociale, ac proinde 
etiam non negatur eidem potestati laicse jus ad directionem scholarum, 
quantum legitimus ille finis postulat." ^ 

At times we have heard serious men deny to the State the right to 
educate under the pretext that the State might abuse that right. This 
is bad reasoning. The abuse that authority may make of a right 
cannot destroy the right. You would not deny to the State the right 
of making laws, of declaring war, because it may make bad laws, or 
lead the nation into unjust wars. Not only is such reasoning bad, it 
is very imprudent. It is true that to-day more than ever we must 
be careful not to attribute to the State rights to which it is not entitled ; 
but neither should we fall into the contrary error and contest the rights 
to which it is entitled. That would be to deprive the State of powers 
it may indeed abuse at times, but also might rightly use ; it would 
be to condemn what governments faithful to their mission have done 
in the past and are doing to-day. The opinion we are criticizing 
will never prevent civilized nations from having public or govern- 
mental schools; but it will furnish the evil-minded a pretext for 
affirming that the Church is hostile to the prerogatives of the State ; 
it will prevent Catholics, when in power, from using a means that 
would be in their hands a powerful agent for good. 

It has been said that the State cannot teach, because it has no teach- 
ing to give. An absolutely false assertion. The State has its own 
doctrines, and must have them. How otherwise could it make 
laws ? We must, however, admit that the State is not qualified to 
define and impose religious doctrines. It is from the Church the 
State must receive such teaching. But the State knows the natural 
law, at least in its fundamental principles, and is bound to secure the 
execution thereof; and the State certainly knows the rational sciences 
on which depend agriculture, industry and the arts. 

It is plain that the right of the State in education is not an unlim- 
ited right. The State, just as individuals or the family, cannot teach 
error and vice, cannot set up schools that are atheistic or agnostic. — 
Neither is this right an exclusive one, it cannot destroy the rights of 
individuals and of parents, it supplements these ; all these rights co- 

^ Schema Constitutionis dogmatics De Ecclesiae Ckristi, patrum examini pro- 
positum, c. XV, not. 47. 



16 

exist and should be exercised harmoniously. Our conclusion then is 
this, the State has been endowed by God with the right of founding 
the schools that contribute to its welfare. 

[d). The Right of the Church to Educate. 

That the Church has the right to teach results from the words of 
Our Lord to the Apostles, " docete omnes gentes.'' The Church is es- 
sentially a teaching power. The Church alone has the right to teach 
Christian doctrines, that is to say, the revealed truths, the guardian- 
ship, interpretation and defence of which it has pleased Christ to 
entrust to her. The words, docete omnes gentes, " teach all nations," 
were not addressed to the heads of nations, but to the Apostles and 
through them to the Pope and the Bishops in union with the Pope. 
No earthly power shares this right with the Church, no prince of this 
world can claim it as being his proper right. — The Church, having 
thus received directly from God the right to teach revealed religion, 
is thereby indirectly endowed with the right to teach the sciences and 
letters, in so far as they are necessary or useful to the knowledge and 
practice of revelation. The right to teach religion comprehends the 
right to communicate whatever may serve religious education. We 
do not say that the teaching of profane sciences and letters belongs to 
the church by the same title that the teaching of religion does; much 
less do we say that such teaching belongs to her exclusively ; what 
we do say is, that the right to spread the revelation entails the right 
to whatever is profitable to revelation. Now human sciences and let- 
ters are destined by God to be handmaidens of faith and of the chief 
among sciences, theology. — This right is a special right, proper to the 
Church, direct as to revelation, indirect as to other knowledge. — 
Moreover, if we consider the Church merely as a human association, 
we cannot refuse to her the natural right to teach the truths she is 
adapted and fitted to impart to men. Such right belongs, as we have 
seen, to associations. 

II. 

The Mission to Educate. 

By the word " mission" we mean not any obligation in general, but 
a special charge, an office. The right to teach may exist without the 
duty to teach and especially without the mission to teach ; but the duty 



17 

and a fortiori the mission cannot exist without the right. The duty 
of instructing the ignorant, within a certain measure at least, results 
from the charity we should have for our neighbor. This duty may 
be more or less binding. It is ranked among 'the spiritual works 
of mercy, and for this reason the Church has always and everywhere 
sought to realize a work so pleasing to God, It is not our purpose 
to insist on this point, but to inquire what is the mission in regard 
to education imposed by Divine Providence on parents, the state, and 
the church. 

(a). The Mission to Educate incumbent on Parents. 

We need not delay on this point after what we have said on the 
right of parents ; for this right springs mainly from their mission. 
The end of conjugal society is the procreation and education of 
children ; tlie mission of parents is to form men for the Church and 
the State ; evidently this formation implies the development of the 
physical, intellectual and moral faculties. " Let us consider the child," 
says Taparelli,^ "at the moment when his reason puts forth its first 
complete and formal act. Evidently at that moment the child does 
not know all truth ; it scarcely has any clear ideas ; for a long while 
it will need masters to impart to it by their authority the simplest 
and most necessary notions. As soon as these primal ideas are pro- 
posed to it, it sees their fitness, at least, vaguely and confusedly ; and 
if they were not proposed to it, it would remain in ignorance of them 
for a long time. The intention of nature is that they be proposed to 
it, for nature has formed intellect for the knowledge of the truth, 
and society to facilitate and develop such knowledge. And so the 
parent has the obligation of instructing and the child the obligation 
of attending to the instruction, until the day when the reason of 
the youth is matured and he can discover for himself the principles 
of conduct, the laws of his moral activity. Then only, when the rea- 
son of the child is nearly as well developed as that of the father, the 
child being equally capable of knowing the truth by himself, is he 
bound to give to his own reason that obedience which formerly he 
yielded to the reason of the parent." We have cited this passage 
in its entirety, because, while giving the reason for the parents' 
mission to educate, it clearly marks the extent and duration of 
that mission. 

^Saggio teoretico, n. 1565, 1566. 



18 



(6). The Mission to Educate incumbent on the State. 

The end of civil society is to secure the material, intellectual and 
moral perfection of the citizen, that is to say civilization, for true 
civilization comprises these three things. The purpose of civil au- 
thority is: 1°, to maintain peace between citizens, protect their mu- 
tual rights, their legitimate activity ; 2°, to supply the insufficiency 
of individuals. Such is the traditional and Christian notion of the 
State.^ Such, also, is the notion expressed in the preamble to the Con- 
stitution of the United States. " We, the people of the United States, 
in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic 
tranquillity, provide for the common defense, promote the general 
welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our pos- 
terity, do ordain and establish this Constitution." 

To this double purpose of civil authority correspond functions of 
a different order; some essential, exclusively proper to the authority 
and to be exercised by it constantly ; some accidental, belonging to 
individuals as well, and liable to be exercised or not by the authority 
according to circumstances. The essential functions correspond to the 
primary end of the State, the maintenance of peace. Such are, for 
instance, legislation, courts of justice, infliction of penalties, declara- 
tions of war. The accidental functions correspond to the secondary 
end of the State, supplying the insufficiency of individuals. Such 
are, for instance, the laying out and repairing of roads, the foundation 
of hospitals, and the like. Mgr. Cavagnis has made a very clear 
exposition of this matter in his Instructiones Juris Publici JEcclesi- 
astici.^ He is in perfect accord with Professor Wilson in his estim- 
able work. The Slate, and with Messrs. Westel W. Willoughby 
and William P. Willoughby in their recent contribution. Govern- 
ment and Administration of the United States. We take this ex- 
tract from them : " Among the many functions of government there 
are many so obviously necessary to the existence of a nation, however 
organized, that there is no discussion concerning the expediency of 
their exercise by the State. We may therefore group governmental 
duties under two heads : the necessary and the optional, or as Prof. 
Wilson has named them, the constituant and the ministrant. Under 
the first head are embraced all those functions which must exist under- 

1 S. Thomas, De Reg. Princ, i., 15. "Cayagnis, op. cit. 



19 

every form of government ; and under the second title those under- 
taken, not by way of governing, but by way of advanqing the general 
interests of society." ^ 

This being well understood, we affirm without hesitancy that the 
State has the mission, that is a special duty, of providing education in 
the letters, sciences and arts. This duty is comprised in the general 
duty of providing the common good. We have seen above how 
the diffiision of knowledge promotes the common welfare of society. 
It will be enough to state here the teaching of Taparelli. This great 
philosopher thus writes in the work we have quoted more than once : 
" No one can contest that it is the duty of society to protect the intel- 
lect of its members against injustice, fraud, error and ignorance, against 
all the elements that attack the first principles of human activity. If 
the individual man is bound to procure for his neighbor the good of 
truth, in as far as this good of truth is for his neighbor a means to 
his end, evidently this obligation is more binding on society, destined 
as it is by the Creator to protect the individual in the attainment of 
temporal happiness. The existence of this duty is beyond question, 
the manner, however, of fulfiling it depends on the degree of perfec- 
tion to which society has risen." ^ 

The duty of teaching is not for the State an essential duty, it is 
accidental. Individuals, families, associations may have provided 
all the education that is necessary. In that case the State is freed 
from its obligation. But we must add that in primary education 
this hypothesis is rarely realized. For, as Cavagnis remarks, it is 
almost impossible that the zeal of parents and private charity should 
suffice for the instruction of the poor.^ We may therefore assert that, 
generally speaking, the State is bound to take measures for the dif- 
fusion of human knowledge. It can accomplish this glorious mission 
by encouraging private efforts, helping parents, establishing schools, 
appointing capable teachers. If this duty falls on the State at large, 
it binds more particularly, as to primary education at least, the local 
authority of municipal communities, as they represent more immedi- 
ately the families. Certainly among the local interests for which the 

^ Johns Hopkins University Studies in Political and Historical Sciences, Ninth 

Series, I-H. 

^ Saggio teoretico, Diss. 4, c. 4, ^ 2, n. 903 et seqq. ' 

^Op. cit. liv. 4, n. 107, "Ex parte (scholse privatorum) semper deficient, cum pro 

pauperibus vix possibile sit adsint universim charitate privatorum constitutse." 



20 

municipality should provide, the education of children holds the first 
rank. — Finally, to avoid all danger of misconception, we wish to 
state that for civil society, as for individuals, right goes beyond duty 
in this matter. Therefore, while saying that the State should provide 
instruction, where private individuals fail to do so, we do not mean 
to say that the State may teach only when and where individuals 
fail to do their duty. The exercise of the duty of the State is allow- 
able whenever the State judges the exercise of this duty to be useful, 
without being absolutely necessary, 

(c). The Mission to Educate inGumbent on the Church. 

The Church has received from her Divine Founder the mission to 
teach the supernatural truths. Her duty is to make known to man 
his relations to God, his end, the rules he must follow and the means 
he must use to attain that end. But the Church has not received the 
mission to make known the human sciences, she has not been estab- 
lished for the progress of nations in the arts and sciences, no more 
than to render them powerful and wealthy. Doubtless, in virtue of 
the general harmony that reigns between all things, the Church, 
while communicating the science of things heavenly, contributes 
powerfully to the development of human sciences; just as she con- 
tributes to the temporal happiness and strength of nations by incul- 
cating the practice of the supernatural virtues. But this is a result 
not the object proper of the mission of the Church. Her duty of 
teaching human sciences is only indirect, a work of charity or of 
necessity : of charity, when they are not sufficiently taught by others 
who have that duty ; of necessity, when they are badly taught, that 
is, taught in a sense opposed to supernatural truth and morality. 
This is why the missionary, setting foot in a savage land, though 
he begins with the preaching of the Gospel, very soon establishes 
schools. In this case his action is a necessity. For to make 
Christians you must first have men using their powers of mind, 
"When the Roman Empire was falling into ruin, bishops took in hand 
the administration and defence of cities,^ That was a work of neces- 
sity, for in order to serve God, men must be able to lead a tranquil 
life. In these days of religious indifference, in the presence of an 

• Paul Violet, Histoire des institutions politiques et administralives de la France, torn. 
I, p. 380. 



21 

education that is indifferent or hostile to religion, bishops found 
schools, colleges, academies, universities. Clearly this is a case of 
necessity, regrettable necessity, implying the regret that the State is 
indifferent to Christianity in the premises. 

There are men who seem to assert that the Church has received the 
mission to teach human as well as divine science. They give to the 
words of Christ, " Euntes, docete" an indefinite interpretation. But 
such an interpretation is evidently false. The context indicates the 
restriction we have placed. What the Apostles are to teach is the 
doctrine and the morality of Jesus Christ, " Qumcumque mandavi," 
" whatsoever I have commanded," and this teaching is an object of 
faith, " qui crediderit salvus erit," " who believeth shall be saved." 
The interpretation we criticize, is highly imprudent. To assert that 
the Church has received the direct mission and duty of imparting the 
human sciences, is to make the Church responsible for the condition 
of the sciences, letters and arts among Christian nations. Let us not 
be understood as saying that Catholic nations are inferior to the non- 
Catholic in true civilization. We assert no such thing. But we do 
think that Christian apologetics should not be handicapped by useless 
and dangerous assumptions. In this respect, and also as being re- 
plete with profound considerations bearing on the subject matter, we 
recommend to our readers Cardinal Newman's masterly work, " The 
Idea of a University," especially discourses i, ii, iii, iv, viii, ix and 
the discourse entitled, " Christianity and Letters." 



III. 

AUTHOKITY OVER EDUCATION. 

Authority over education, or the control of education, must not to 
be confounded with the right to teach. The right to educate, beino-^ 
as we have defined it, a moral faculty to impart to others those things 
which one is fit to impart licitly and usefully to the end of forming 
the mind and heart, belongs to whomsoever has the fitness required. 
Authority over education is the right of watching over, controlling, 
and directing education. This authority belongs to him or to those 
who are vested by natural or positive law with the powers required 
and sufficient in the premises. Now there are three societies intended 
by God to conduct man to his end : the family, the state, and the 



22 

church. Each of these societies has its proper authority, the charac- 
ter and extent of which authority are indicated by the nature of the 
society itself. We are not called upon to explain the character and 
extent of parental, civil, and religious authority. The matter in hand 
only demands that we examine their respective powers in the sphere 
of education. 



{a). Parental Authority in Education. 

Parents have authority to regulate, direct, and control the educa- 
tion of their children. They may teach their children themselves or 
get them taught by others ; they may choose the masters to whom 
they confide them, determine the sciences they wish to be imparted to 
them, the means of correcting them. Other individuals, associations, 
municipalities, and the State should take account of the wishes of the 
parents in the organization of schools ; for the father can never lose 
control of the education of his child. Need we add that parental 
authority is subordinate to another authority which certainly may not 
annihilate, but may direct it. " There is," says Perin, " between pub- 
lic power and domestic power, a certain equilibrium of authority and 
liberty, a certain harmony of properties which cannot be disturbed 
without injury to both. The family cannot claim complete immunity 
in the presence of the political power. In the interest of social law 
as well as in the interest of the family, those who live in the bonds of 
domestic life must respect that law. The father, supreme in the 
home, is not infallible. Those who are under obedience to him have 
always the right, as a safeguard to their liberty and the inviolability 
of their person, to claim from the State that protection which paren- 
tal authority might fail to give. At times they may need defence 
against the abuses of that very parental authority which should pro- 
tect them. It is the right and the duty of the political power to see 
that the essential order of the family be not disturbed. The more 
extensive the rights of the political authority the greater may be the 
danger, arising from the ever increasing complications of social rela- 
tions, that disorder might find way into the various parts of society, 
and produce disturbances, and overturn the order that should reign 
between the different groups of the social whole. Hence, there is a 
limitation of the parental jurisdiction corresponding to the extension 
of the political jurisdiction. Certain acts of high jurisdiction, al- 



23 

lowed to the father in primitive societies, cannot be allowed him in 
more advanced societies." ^ 



(6). The Authority of the State over Education. 

The question here is not of the authority of the State over the 
teachino; of religion and over theoloo-ical schools. It is clear that the 
State has no jurisdiction in that sphere.^ Nor is there question of the 
authority of the State over schools founded by the State ; from our 
statements concerning the right of the State to educate, it is evident 
that the State can govern the schools it founds. The question then 
is about schools of human science founded by individuals, families, 
associations. Furthermore, we are speaking of the State's authority 
in se. We have no intention of defining when and under what 
conditions the State may or should put its authority into operation. 
That is a question of prudence and justice. 

Having tlius cleared the ground, we affirm that the State has au- 
thority over education. This authority is included in that general 
authority with which the State is invested for promoting the common 
good, for guaranteeing to each man his rights, for preventing abuses. 
Education, well-directed or ill-directed, is one of the great means of 
good or of evil to the social body. It is on the education he receives 
that the future of the child depends ; and the child needs protection 
all the more that he is weak and at the mercy of others. There is no 
need that we should insist on this motive, it seems to us self-evident. 
As a fact, the assertion is not contested to any great extent, at least by 
serious minds. We have already seen that the pontifical theologians 
of the Coimcil of the Vatican protest they do not mean to refuse to 
the State the power of regulating education as regards the temporal 
welfare. Cardinal Zigliara admits the State's rightof overseeing that 
the intellectual and moral education of its future citizens be main- 
tained within the limits of honesty and truth.^ A Roman Canonist, 
in a book written for the use of bishops specially, deplores the fact 
that the authority of the Church over schools is too often disregarded ; 
but he adds immediately that he does not mean to deny to the State 
the direction and patronage of the natural sciences nor to diminish the 

' Perin, Les lots de la Soclele Chretienne, lib. III. c. 2. 

* Encycl. of Leo XIII. to the Bishops of Prussia. ^ L. c. 



24 

civil jurisdiction in regard to them.^ We refrain from quoting other 
authorities, such as Sauv4, Cavagnis, etc. We pass on to the exam- 
ination of some practical applications of the principle enunciated. 

The State has the right to prevent the unworthy and the incapable 
from assuming the role of educators. But has it the power to exact 
from those who wish to enter into the work of education that they 
give evidence of worth and capability ? We think that the State can 
not be refused the power of exacting ordinary and reasonable con- 
ditions of qualification. Such was in the XVI century, the opinion 
of the famous Jesuit Mariana. In his well-known work, " De Rege 
et Regis Institutione," he reminds the reader of the care taken by the 
Persians, as related in Xenophon, to entrust the education of their 
children not to slaves, like other nations, but to old men specially 
chosen and renowned for probity. He then adds : " Quam indus- 
triam vellem ex parte principes nostri civitatesque imitarentur, viris 
eximiis ei curse ex utroque ordine sacrato et populari prsefectis cum po- 
testate de prseceptorura moribus, docendique dexteritate (in quo grav- 
issime peccatur multis modis) judicandi publice. Quid enim? Cal- 
ceos vestesve non conficiat nisi qui artis peritiam ante probarit, filios, 
sine delectu cuicumque se obtrudenti erudiendos tradamus ? " Such 
also is the opinion to-day of many and notably of the Roman pro- 
fessor we have often cited. And to his reasoning which we quote we 
really do not see what can be objected. " Illud (sc. normas quasdam 
prseventivas quibus idoneitas docentium verificetur constituere) posse 
probamus ex jure Status normas quasdam generales prseventivas con- 
stituendi in iis quae sunt majoris momenti, cum id valde expediat bono 
publico, et aliunde non multum gravet privates, si res intra limites a 
nobis constitutos retineatur, id est simpliciter idoneitatem veriiicari, 
non autem extraordinariam et ssepe inutilem peritiam. Ilinc videmus 
et in aliis pluribus has normas prseventivas constitutas esse, ut circa 
emptiones et venditiones et alia negotia privata, v. g. de justis mensu- 
ris et ponderibus." ^ What is the meaning of Licentia as known to 
Canon Law ? In the middle ages there was in every diocese an 
official, named Seholasticus, whose special office was to exercise control 
in the name of the Church over all educational institutions, especially 
as to the choice of teachers. To these he granted or refused a license 
to teach. This license became necessary as far back as the XII cen- 

^ Lucidi, De Visitalione Sacrorum Liminum, Tom. II., c. 7, § 2, a. 4, n. 207. 
* Cavagnis, op. cit. 



25 

tury, and thus was given to education a direction corresponding to the 
spirit and views of the Church.^ Now, what the Church may do 
within the spiritual sphere and in view of the spiritual welfare, that 
the State may do within the temporal sphere and in view of the tem- 
poral good. In fact the older Canonists acknowledge that the right 
to confer degrees in the human sciences, law, medicine, philosophy, 
belongs to the sovereign authority of the State.^ Now what are 
grades ? Not only titles scientific and literary, not only honors, but 
declarations that the bearer is fit for certain professions and especially 
for the profession of teaching. 

The State has authority to see to it that parents fulfil their duty of 
educating their children, to compel them, if need be, and to substitute 
itself to them in the fulfilment of this duty in certain cases. In the 
use of this authority the State does but lend a hand to the execution 
of the natural law. It forces the parents to fulfil a duty that binds 
them most strictly, it protects the child and safeguards his future, it 
removes from society most serious perils. Here again we quote 
Mariana: " Sed et eisdem prsefectis jus sit, me quidem auctore, in- 
quirendi in civium mores, censorum instar, ac coercendi malo privatim 
parentes in filiorum institutione negligentes, includendi etiam si opus 
est rebelles, ingenio prsefracto, prsesertim qui defunctis parentibus aut 
domo profugi sine lare familiari incertis sedibus vacantur pueri puel- 
Iseque, unde scelerum licentia existit, animi depravantur, multorum 
corpora libidinum tabe contaminantur." As to modern writers on 
education they seem to us to be almost unanimous on this point. Ta- 
parelli teaches that the State has a strict duty to remedy the shame- 
ful and unnatural negligence of so many parents, who forgetting the 
first of their obligations, the education of their children, accustom 
them to idleness, misery, and crime ; that the State has the duty to 
see to it that every child receives that education to which it is en- 
titled, as soon as bud in him the first germs of reason ; that it has the 
duty, as holding the place of the Sovereign Father from Whom comes 
paternity, to rouse parents from lethargy, to compel the unnatural 
father to behave as a true father.^ Perin is not less positive. "If the 
father forget, as too often happens in our days, that he owes himself 

^ Bourbon, La Licence d'enseigner, in the " Eevue des Quest. Hist." Tom. XIX, 
1876, p. 513. 

* Schmalzgrueber, Dec, Lib. V., Tit. 5, n. 19. 
'^ Saggio teorelico, 1. c, n. 919. 



26 

to his offspring to the very abnegation of self, if within the family he 
seeks only a life of selfish ease without any concern as to the obligation 
imposed on him by God to make of his children true men for the 
Church and the State : who, in the presence of so grave an evil, 
will dare deny to the State the power to provide by compulsory edu- 
cation for the future of the rising generation, and for the conservation 
of the social body ? " ^ We will not multiply quotations of a like im- 
port. The reader may consult, if he wishes, Sauv6,^ Cavagnis.^ We 
have deeply at heart to remark most emphatically right here, that the 
above named writers have a reputation for orthodoxy so well estab- 
lished that no vague and wild accusation of liberalism will avail 
against them. 

If the State may coerce parents who neglect the education of their 
children, so also may it determine a minimum of instruction and 
make it obligatory. Who admits the former must admit the latter. 
The consequence seems to us logically necessary and we are surprised 
that all do not see it. Consider, when are parents called negligent ? 
Evidently, when they do not give their children a minimum of edu- 
cation. If then you grant to the State power over cases of neglect, 
you at once give it power to define what is the minimum of education, 
and to exact that minimum by way of prevention and of general pre- 
cept. A law prescribing a minimum of instruction is nothing else, it 
seems to us, than the application of a principle of natural law to the 
given circumstances of this or that country. We are aware that dis- 
tinguished writers, such as the editors of the Civilta Cattolica* and 
Costa Rosetti,^ do not admit this conclusion. We have carefully ex- 
amined their arguments, they are far from convincing us, they seem 
to us very faulty. On the one hand they restrict the power of the 
State to what is strictly necessary for the protection of the State, on 
the other hand they deny that a certain level of instruction for the 
people is necessary. We do not undertake at present to refute in 
detail the considerations advanced by these authors for their views ; 
we beg the reader to examine them for himself, we trust to his judg- 
ment without fear. Just one remark. If the State can hinder par- 
ents from sending their children to labor above the strength of their 

^ Les Lois de la Soeiele Chretienne, torn. I, p. 457. 
''Op. cit., p. 303. 3 Op. cit., torn. 3, n. 49. 

*Ser. VI, vol. 2, p. 708 ; ser. VII, vol. 1, p. 458 ; ser. VIII, vol. 8, p. 5. 
* Op. cit., thes. 176. 



27 

age, say in the mines, a proposition that no Catholic contests, we do 
not see why the state cannot force parents to give these same children 
a minimum of instruction. 

At any rate, we are not left without respectable authorities in favor 
of our opinion. St. Thomas^ teaches that the legislator may take 
measures concerning " bonam disciplinam per quam cives informantur 
ut commune bonum justitise et pacis conservent." Jerome de Medi- 
cis, one of the best commentators of St. Thomas, in the XVI century, 
adds to the above sentence, " sicut si princeps condat legem ut ado- 
lescentes debeant litteris studere, ut hoc studio cives informentur, ut 
commune bonum justitiae et pacis conservent." To our forefathers 
compulsory education was not a bugbear. In our days, Mgr. Sauv6 
declares that he dares not refuse to the State the authority to make 
obligatory so much of elementary education as is strictly necessary 
or useful.^ Nor does Cardinal Zigliara dare deny that power to the 
State.^ Cardinal Manning acknowledges that the State has the power 
to punish the father who neglects to send his child to school, and this 
power is incontestably within the competence of the State.* At times 
we have seen missionaries make obligatory on the faithful not only the 
elementary religious, but the elementary secular instruction in read- 
ing and writing;^ and yet over such instruction the missionaries have 
only an indirect authority and control. 

We think we have said enough to justify our position. In grant- 
ing to the State the power of making obligatory a minimum of in- 
struction, we do not grant the power of prescribing a standard arbi- 
trarily set up. This minimum is naturally determined by public 
opinion, it will comprehend everywhere reading, writing, and the 
elements of arithmetic, the three Rs. In certain countries and under 
certain conditions the standard may be higher. " For," as Taparelli^ 
very well says, "the words, 'elementary studies, higher sciences,' are 
terms relative to the condition of each society, to the progress of the 
sciences that are taught in it, to the century in which it lives. A 
science which to-day is classed among the 'elementary,' might have 

' 1, 2, ques. 95, a. 3. " Op. c, p. 306. ^ l_ c., 3a. obj. 

* Pastor. Letter for the Lent of 1872, quoted by P. Pradie, " Traite des Rapports 
de la Religion ami de la Politique," p. 247. 

* See what is done in the Philippine Islands, " Les Missions Catholiques," Nov. 1880. 
«0p. cit., n. 917. 



28 

been simply marvellous in the middle ages." — While granting to the 
State the power to force the father to give to the child a minimum of 
education, we do not grant to the state the power to force the father to 
send ike child to a certain determined school, if the father chooses to give 
the vrescribed minimum at home, or in any school of his choice. Com- 
pulsory State schools are not logically included in compulsion of edu- 
cation. In a word, to recognize in the State a power is not to recog- 
nize in tJie State the moral right to abuse the power, however much 
the possibility of the abuse may be admitted. 

If the State may exact on the part of teachers evidences of capability, 
on the part of the children a minimum of instruction, if it may pun- 
ish negligent parents, it follows that it may also prescribe the teaching 
of this or that branch, the knowledge of which, considering the cir- 
cumstances, is deemed necessary to the majority of the citizens. No 
more difficulty in the one case than in the other. — Moreover, it is not 
needed that we should remark that the State has over all schools the 
authority of inspection as to hygiene and public morality. 

The powers we believe necessary to admit in the State, have for their 
object the protection of the weak and the prevention of abuses. The 
exercise of such powers is the more necessary the less advanced in 
civilization the country is, and the less capable are the citizens of 
knowing their true interests and of securing them unaided. It may 
well be that a country might arrive to such a social perfection, that ab- 
stention in this matter by the civil authority will be preferable to 
its intervention. Even in that lower social condition that may re- 
quire the intervention of the^tate, the intervention may be more use- 
ful if it come under the guise of persuasion rather than of coaction. 
And this remark applies especially to compulsory education. How- 
ever, these are questions of governmental prudence, not of right, 
strict, pure and proper. 

(d.) Authority of the Church in Education. 

It is not question here of the authority of the Church over schools 
founded by her, but the question is of the authority of the Church 
over teaching given by individuals, the family, associations, and the 
State. — The Church has a direct authority over the teaching of the 
Faith and Christian law, or over the religious and moral education of 
Catholic youths. Hers it is to regulate, direct, and control the re- 



29 

ligious education. This authority is evidently comprehended in her 
general mission. — As to the teaching of letters, sciences, arts, the 
Church has only an indirect authority over that, she can busy herself 
with it only in its relations to religion and morality. — Schools, colleges, 
and other like institutions, are subject to the ecclesiastical authority, 
not only in religious teaching, but also in secular teaching, with this 
notable diiFerence, however ; that religious teaching comes directly 
and exclusively under her control, whereas secular teaching, which 
directly is under the control of the civil or domestic authority, de- 
pends on the Church only indirectly in the name of faith and morals. 
This comes to saying that the Church has the right to see to it that 
any teaching whatsoever do not injure faith, morals, the salvation of 
men, things of which she has the guardianship. This is the doctrine 
as laid down the proposed Vatican Schema already quoted. " Non 
asseritur potestati ecclesiasticse, velut ex divina constitutione conse- 
quens auctoritas ad positivam directionem scholarum quatenus in iis 
litterse et scientise naturales traduntur ; sed vindicatur ecclesise auc- 
toritas ad directionem scholarum, quantum ipse finis Ecclesiae postulat; 
adeoque asseritur jus et officium prospiciendi fidei et christianis mori- 
bus juventutis catholicce, hocque ipso cavendi ne pretiosa haec bona 
per ipsam institutionem in scholis corrumpantur. Hoc jus Ecclesiie in 
se spectatum non minus ad superiores quam ad inferiores scholas ex- 
tenditur. . . . Cseterum per se clarum est exercitium hujus juris in 
applicatione ad diversos terminos necessario debere esse diversum." 
It is the denial of this authority of the Church which is condemned 
in the 45th and 47th propositions of the Syllabus. 

In the course of ages the Church has exercised this authority more 
or less extensively according to circumstances. She has exacted from 
teachers certain guarantees of religion and piety ; in this sense she 
has demanded a profession of faith from whomever would teach .^ 
She has also demanded guarantees of fitness in exacting the licentia 
docendi already spoken of. She has reminded parents of their strict 
duty of giving to their children sufficient instruction. She has at 
times taken severe measures in regard to unworthy parents. In a 
word she has employed in view of the spiritual end means analogous 
to those used by the State in view of the secular end of mankind. 

^ " Neque magistro cuiquam docendi potestas fieri quin prius fidei professionem in 
manus ordinarii sui emittat, quae quotannis erit renovanda, ut sacri canones prae- 
scribunt." Letter of Clement XIV, to the King of Poland, 18th Dec, 1773. 



30 

IV. 

Liberty of Education. 

The word " liberty " has many meanings, and is open to misunder- 
standings. It means either the absence of internal determining ne- 
cessity, free will, or the absence of obligation, moral liberty, or the 
absence of coaction, civil liberty, or the absence in general of hind- 
rances to the regular evolution of man's powers. Evidently, by lib- 
erty of education is meant moral liberty, civil liberty, and that more 
general liberty that often goes under the name of Christian liberty.^ 
After all that has been said on the right, mission, and authority of 
education, we may be brief in this question of liberty. Though the 
concept of liberty is not the same as the concept of right, the former 
meaning a permission to act or the absence of obligation, the latter an 
inviolable faculty to act; nevertheless, right and liberty almost 
always merge into one another. It must not be forgotten that the 
exercise of authority necessarily limits liberty when it is bad and se- 
cures it when it is good. From the principles we have laid down it 
is easy to deduce what is and should be reasonable liberty in edu- 
cation. 

It is at once clear that the moral liberty of teaching is restricted. 
Teaching, like any human act, is subject to divine law. No one is at 
liberty to teach evil, error, or inopportune truth, for inopportune 
truth is truth accidentally injurious. — It is clear that civil liberty 
in education is also more or less restricted. The state has for mission 
to hinder, as far as it can prudently, any evil coming from physical 
liberty, and to secure liberty in that which is good. The State, there- 
fore, cannot allow an education that is corrupting. — But the State 
cannot prevent and hinder all evil, cannot secure all good, its action is 
limited. Hence the State may, and at times should, tolerate a teach- 
ing that is bad, reproved by divine law ; it may permit such a teach- 
ing positively from a legal stand-point. Indeed by such permission 
the State does not grant the right to teach evil, but it does grant 
legal impunity, which impunity, as Suarez remarks, contains a moral 

^ It is of this liberty that Leo XIII speaks in the Encyclical " Libertas." Igitur in 
hominum societate libertas veri nominis non est in eo posita ut agas quodlibet, ex 
quo vel maxima existeret turba et confusio in oppressionem civitatis evasura, sed in. 
hoc ut per leges civiles expeditius possis secundum legis seternse prsescripta vivere. 



31 

right of some importance, the moral right to be hindered by no one, 
individuals or agents of the State. If we are asked how civil law can 
give a moral right to impunity when it cannot give a moral right to 
a bad act, we answer thus. The right to evil can never be a moral 
right, no one can ever get the right to commit a crime, no law can 
ever recognize such a right. But when the civil authority finds itself 
in the necessity of permitting legally vicious acts, it may grant to its 
subjects the right to be legally undisturbed, if they do in fact commit 
such vicious acts. This is a real right founded in reason itself, which 
advises and commands a legislator to allow his subjects to perform 
certain acts with impunity, in order that greater evils may be avoided 
or greater good procured. In a word, you have only to apply to edu- 
cation those general principles by which are solved the questions of 
liberty of worship, liberty of associations, and that larger question, 
tolerance of social evil. We conclude that the civil liberty of teach- 
ing may reach greater extension than moral liberty would allow. 

And now were we to define in what consists true liberty of educa- 
tion, that liberty which is the honor of a people, worthy and capable 
of self-government, we should say that it consists in the absence of 
all useless obstacles to the communication of truth on the part of in- 
dividuals, families, associations, of all those in a word, who are fit to 
teach. This liberty, thanks be to God, exists in the United States, 
nowhere so wide and sacred. 

Education : to whom does it belong, is the question with which we 
started out. We now make answer. It belongs to the individual 
physical or moral, to the family, to the state, to the church ; to none 
of these solely and exclusively, but to all four combined in harmo- 
nious working for the reason that man is not an isolated but a social 
being. Precisely in the harmonious combination of these four factors 
in education is the difficulty of practical application. Practical appli- 
cation is the work of the men whom God has placed at the head of 
the Church and the State, not ours. 



APPENDIX. 



A REJOINDER 



My pamphlet on Education has provoked adverse criticism. 
Critics, notably Rev. R. I. Holaind, S. J./ have seen in it what I 
did not say, and have not seen in it what I did say. I feel called 
on to offer some explanations that, I trust, will put the truth in clearer 
light, end misunderstandings and dissipate prejudices. 



Object and Purpose of the Pamphlet. 

I. The special object I had in view is indicated in the title, 
explained more fully on the first page, summarily and emphatically 
asserted in the concluding sentences of the last page. I wished to 
show that education belongs to men taken individually and collect- 
ively in legitimate association, to the family, to the State, to the 
Church, to all four together, and not to any one of these four factors 
separately. In other words, education is one of those mixed matters 
in which many powers concur, and which is to be regulated amicably 
by the parties interested. Leo XIII speaks of this amicable concor- 
dance in mixed matters when he says in the encycl. Immortale Dei: 
"Nature's law first of all, then God's law prescribes that in mixed 
matters there should be between the powers interested not divorce^ 
much less contention, but full accord.^ " 

^ The Parent First : An Answer to Dr. Bouquillon's Query, Education : To Whom 
Does it Belong ? By R. I. Holaind, S. J. Benziger Bros. 

'^ " Iri' negotiis mixti juris maxime esse secundum naluram itemque secundum Dei 
consilia non secessionem unius partis ab altera, multo minus contentionem, sed plane 
concordiam." Again in the Encycl. Nobilissima Gallorum gens: "Veram quoties 
quidquam constitui de eo genere oporteat, de quo utramque potestatem, diversis 
quidem causis diversoque modo, sed tamen utramque constituere rectum sit, necessaria 
est et utilitati publicse consentanea utriusque Concordia; qua sublata omnino conse- 
cutura est anceps qusedam mutabilisque conditio, quacum nee Ecclesise nee civitatis 
potest tranquillitas consistere." 

3 



The object of the pamphlet was not the religious organization of the 
school. That question has been so clearly determined by the Holy 
See, go fully explained by our national and provincial councils, so 
learnedly and eloquently expounded by many of our bishops, that I 
thought it useless to go over a settled point and prove once more 
that the system of so-called neutral schools may not be accepted by 
Catholics. How came I to be misunderstood on this point, since I 
have been sufficiently categorical, it seems to me, and have frequently 
stated throughout the pamphlet, (p. 15) italicising the statement, that 
the State may not found schools prejudicial to religion? 

Neither was it my purpose to speak ex professo and at length of the 
obligation of parents to entrust their children to worthy masters and 
support good schools. Such obligation is of the domain of practical 
morals, and has been so often defined by competent authority that I 
might be dispensed from passing my opinion on it. And notwithstand- 
ing, have I not expressed my conviction on this very point most unmis- 
takably, since more than once I have asserted in the pamphlet (pp. 10, 
20) that parents have not the right to give to their children an edu- 
cation detrimental to faith and morals, that in the presence of a sys- 
tem of education indifferent to religion the Church has the duty of 
establishing Christian schools?^ By the way, I would remark that 
the obligation of parents and the duty of the Church in this regard 
depend not on the solution given to the question of Bight, viz : May 
the State, and in what measure, busy itself with the teaching of 
profane sciences, but rather on the solution given to the question of 
Fact, viz : Are the schools of the State good or bad. Suppose that 
the State had no right whatever to teach and yet opened its school ; 
parents could certainly avail themselves of the school, provided it 
were of the right sort. Grant the State, on the contrary, an uncon- 
ditional right to teach ; then, evidently, its schools, if they are of 
the wrong kind, can be of no use to parents. Hence, it is clear that 
the questions with which we have dealt are important when viewed 
from the standpoint of political action ; but viewed in their bearing 
on the duty of the Christian parent in educating his children, they 
have not that same importance. 

1 It must have been in a fit of distraction tliat a certain Catholic journal quoted 
against me a passage of the Encyclical Sapientia, where the Holy Father insists 
on the obligation of parents in regard to the Christian education of their 
children. 



II. Such was the special object of the pamphlet, and now my 
reasons for taking that special view of the matter are the following. 
I wished to throw light on a point that I and others better informed 
than myself thought to be involved in confusion and darkness in 
many minds. The lack of a full perception and grasp of the prin- 
ciples that underlie education is the cause that in journalistic polemics 
imputations of liberalism and even heresy are too easily cast on 
adversaries, even Catholic adversaries. ^ Hence, political action may 
get based on ground that is not solid, and be forced to a platform 
from which there, is little chance of gaining our cause before the 
public opinion of the country. Is there not some utility in showing 
our non-Catholic fellow citizens that the doctrine of the Church is 
not opposed either to a reasonable liberty or to the just prerogatives 
of the State in the matter of education, just as in all other questions 
where the two powers come in contact? 

A thorough understanding of principles is the basis of a sound 
policy, is the one means to prevent those politico-religious con- 
flicts so dreaded by the Holy See, because so difficult to allay. 
Let it be kept in mind that in order to oppose a State law, 
to prevent its promulgation or to obtain its repeal, there is no 
need of claiming that every enactment in such matters goes 
beyond the limit of State authority ; it suffices — and this course 
is often the fairest and wisest — to insist on the fact that the 
State, in passing and upholding such a law, has abused its right. 
The whole world has given praise to the political sagacity of 
the German Centre. On the school question that party found 
itself in the presence of most tyrannical measures adopted by the 
government. It had to vindicate the essential rights of the Church ; 
the exclusive right of educating the young clergy ; the right 
of inspecting and guarding the religious instruction of all her chil- 
dren. The Centre did not fail to do its duty and gained more or 
less success. But while resisting the unjust claims of the State, the 
Catholic party was careful not to compromise its cause by denying 

^ The American Ecclesiastical Review, Jan., 1892, p. 74, asserts that nobody "among 
those who have studied the subject " would object to my conclusion. I thought so 
too, still I am glad to have it said by others. But the Review will admit that among 
the Catholic leaders of public opinion there are at least some who have not studied 
the subject. The objections made, prove it beyond any doubt. It is for such that I 
wrote my pamphlet. 



the real and true rights of the State, and notably it has recognized 
that the State can have its own schools and can make education obli- 
gatory for all children. Quite lately, on the last Sunday of October, 
1891, an electoral meeting was held in Treves, at which were 
present many members of the Centre, and among them one well 
known in America, Herr Lieber. At that meeting, the deputy Koehler 
explained the platform of the Catholic party on the school-question. 
He laid down that there were four factors in education : the State, 
the Church, the municipality, the family. He proclaimed that the 
Church cannot give up her indefeasible right of teaching herself 
her own doctrines, but at the same time he proclaimed that no one 
dreams of denying to the State its rights of inspection ; he admitted that 
the State may make education compulsory ; what he does not admit 
is that the State may so far usurp the rights of the father as to 
compel him to send his child to a school determined by the State.^ 
Such has been my purpose. Now, shall I protest against certain 
intentions imputed to me ? If Father Holaind had known me 
better, or if he had taken pains to inform himself, as he might 
very easily have done, as to the origin of the pamphlet, he would 
have been convinced, I am sure, that I never had the ridiculous 
pretension of influencing an assembly of Archbishops; and I fear 
that the breathless haste with which he rushed into print himself to 
save them from some fatal mistake will not be fully appreciated by 
them. But I do pretend and declare that my work was not done 
hastily. The doctrine exposed in the pamphlet has been taught by 
me more than once, and is substantially contained in the treatise De 
Legibus of my Theologia Fundamentalls, printed as early as 1887.^ 
I may add that the English version of the pamphlet had been made 
almost a year ago. 

^ Coitrrier de Bruzelles, 16 November, 1891 : Une assemblee des Catholiques de la 
Prusse Rh^nane. 

" Theologia Moralis Fundamentalis. Ratisbonse, Neo-Eboraci et Cincinnati. Fred. 
Pustet, 1890. The theological reviews of Germany, England, Ireland, Belgium, 
France, Italy have given this work a reception so favorable that I cannot bring 
myself to repeat their appreciations. I may, however, be permitted to refer to 
the Giviltd Cailolica of August 5, 1891, those who should be tempted to suspect my 
orthodoxy. 



II. 

AUTHOEITIES AND QUOTATIONS. 

I. A question, such as the one treated in the pamphlet, demands for 
proper treatment that we should have constantly before our eyes the 
true notions of family and nation, of paternal power and political 
power, of Church and State. On these grave and fundamental 
matters I hold to the doctrine of S. Thomas, Suarez and Leo XIII. 
Cardinal Newman has taught us that in an Apologia for one's teach- 
ing as for one's life egoism is truest humility. Accordingly I make 
bold to say that I am by no means ignorant of the instructions of the 
present Pope ; for not only have I read attentively and used in my 
teaching the acts of Leo XIII as they successively appeared, but I 
have edited them with accompanying analytical notes and made a 
complete index of all the. questions they touch on.^ 

II. In the exposition of the subject X have made use of various 
contemporary publicists of different schools and countries. Think- 
ing that serious readers would like to know the sources from which 
I drew, the works which I consulted, I gave a brief literature of the 
question, not indeed to make a show of erudition, but to make easy 
to students the verification of my assertions and the deeper study 
of points which I merely hinted at. To be sure, I did not name only the 
authors favorable to my views ; such a proceeding would be unworthy 
the sincerity of a true scientist. I have indicated impartially the 
writers who, in my opinion, have treated the question with talent 
and science, be they with me or against me. Strange that Father 
Holaind did not see this, and tried to throw discredit on my 
quotations by insinuating (p. 4) that some of the publicists named in 
the bibliography prefi.xed to my thesis were against me on this or the 
other point of detail. Evidently the authors invoked in ray favor 
are those indicated in the text itself or in the foot notes. I have 
gone over all such citations once more, and I challenge Father 
Holaind and those who have made like insinuations to prove, text 
in hand, that the authors cited by me as favorable to me do not say 
what I make them say. 

^ Sanctissimi Domini Nostri Leonis Papce XIII, Allocutiones, Epistolce, Constitutiones 
uliaque Acta prcedpua. Vol. i^ 1878-1882; vol. ir, 1883-1887. Typis Societatis 
Sancti Augustini. Desclee, De Brouwer et Soc, Brugis et Insulis, 1887. 



8 

III. Frequent use has been made of Mgr. Cavagnis, not only because 
of the intrinsic worth of his writings, but also because of his special 
position. He is a member of the Sacred Congregation of extraordi- 
nary ecclesiastical affairs and Professor in the Pontifical Seminary of 
the Apollinare. May we not repeat in America what is taught in 
the seminary of the Pope himself and is published in Rome ? 

IV. I have placed great reliance on the Schema de Ecdesia. Doubt- 
less, and I have remarked it in the pamphlet, it is not an official docu- 
ment ; but no one will deny that its authority is superior to that of 
any individual writer ; it is the work of a commission of theologians 
named to prepare matters for the Council. That commission was 
made up of men leairned, known for their orthodoxy, devoted to the 
Church and the Holy See, chosen from all the Catholic nations. I 
will name Archbishop Cardoni ; Mgr. Monaco Lavaletta, since Car- 
dinal; Professor Pecci, since Cardinal ; Franz Hettinger; the Jesuits, 
Perrone, Franzelin, since Cardinal, Schrader ; the Dominicans, Fer- 
rari and Spada; Dr. Corcoran, Mgr. Schwetz, Mgr. Gay. The 
schema, the fruit of the knowledge and labors of such men, was 
approved by a directing congregation and judged worthy of being 
laid before the Council as the basis of the Conciliar discussions on 
the subject.^ I beg my opponents to remember all this, and then to 
read attentively chapter xv and note 47, in which the chapter is 
commented. They will find in it, I trust, nothing heterodox or 
imprudent. After that, let them read my pamphlet and show in 
what my doctrine differs from that of the schema. 

III. 

Geneeal Obseevations. 

I. In the wake of many publicists, I distinguished four points in 
regard to education and laid them down in this order : Right, Duty, 
Authority, Liberty. Father Holaind (p. 6, 1. 18) thinks I should 
have begun with Duty, seeing, says he, that Right springs from Duty. 
The stricture is not well founded. Doubtless the imposition of a 
duty implies the right to fulfil such duty ; but it is not true that every 
right comes from an obligation. For instance, I may have the right 
to embrace a religious life, to work, to give alms, and yet not be obli- 

^ Cecconi, Storia del Con. Vat., lib. ii, c. 2, p. 305 and docum. 61. 



9 

gated to do those acts. If Father Holaind is correct, what becomes 
of my right to follow the evangelical counsels ? I hold, then, that 
in education, as in other acts morally honest, Right goes beyond 
Duty, and that the order I laid down is logical — the only one logi- 
cal. Father Holaind (p. 6, 1. 20; p. 13, 1. 26) finds fault with the 
phrase, " Mission to teach." Let me say, that if I have given to the 
word " Mission " a meaning not usual in ordinary English, I took 
good care to define the term, and to state precisely what meaning I 
gave the word (p. 16). No calm reader could have mistaken me. 

A critic of the American Eoelesiastical Review attaches a peculiar 
meaning to my classification of the factors in education, intimat- 
ing that I set the State over the Church. " He unconsciously 
selects them (principles) and disposes them in a way which gives us 
a comparatively clear sight of how he would have us apply them. 
There is a noticeable tendency to say ' the State and the Church,' 
rather than Hhe Church and the State,' even in places where the 
logic of the subject would demand the latter position." ^ Against 
this accusation I appeal to the sense of fairness of my Rev. Critic. 
If in my former writings I had given proof of any preference in favor 
of the State, then might he find a meaning in the disposition of the 
words " State and Church." But it is not the first time that I treat 
of those subjects before the public. I did it in 1877, in my work, 
De virtutibus theologiois (chapter de fidei defensione), again, in 
1880, in the first volume of my work, De virtute religionis (chapter 
de juramento) ; and recently in my Theologia Mor^alis Fimdamentalis. I 
had reason to think that the critic of the American Ecclesiastical Review 
would be better acquainted with the principles exposed in this last 
work.^ I beg to refer him to the chapters on Church, State and 
Family, on law, ecclesiastical and civil ; on parental authority, and 
he will see if he can justly accuse me of tendency to state worship ! 
And even had I made use of a less correct expression, he should 
have remembered the words of S. Ambrose, Epist, 40 : " Verbum 
si offenderit, virtutem professionis interrogato. . . . Etiam sermonem 
dubium mens non dubia obumbrat et defendit a lapsu." I do not 
say this by way of apology, far from it ! Had my critic read the 
pamphlet without prejudice, he would have noticed that in my 
enumeration and in all the arrangement of my essay, I meant to 

^ American Ecclesiastical Review, Jan., 1892. 

*See American Ecclesiastical Review, vol. iii, p. 48. 



10 

proceed by way of gradation, from the lower to the higher, put- 
ting first the individual, and then the Family, the State, and the 
Church : it is in this order that the three societies, necessary and 
established by Grod for the complete good of man, are superposed one 
over the other; and that is all that I wanted to insinuate.^ More- 
over, such an ontological order was imposed upon me by the laws of 
Logic, for what I had to say of individuals and of associations, 
became applicable when I had to treat of the Family, of the State 
and of the Church. I, therefore, affirm that it is not "uncon- 
sciously," but on the contrary very consciously that, when enumerat- 
ing the parties concerned, I put the State before the Church, and 
that, in the disposition of the parts of my essay, I spoke of the right, 
mission and authority of the State before speaking of the right, 
mission and authority of the Church. Would my critic cast a sus- 
picion on Suarez for having treated of civil laws before treating of 
ecclesiastical laws ? Outside of this no one can find in my pamphlet 
anything like a determination as to the order of the words State and 
Church. For instance (p. 8, 1. 31-32), I write " civil and religious 
authority," but p. 10, 1. 32, I put " authority, religious and civil." 
Let me add that the so-called proems de tendance are everywhere 
odious, and contentions merely about words, ridiculous. In olden 
times such things fl.ourished in Byzantium ; I did not expect to find 
them to-day in the free and fair land of America ! 

II. The general notion of Right determined, its various kinds indi- 
cated, I went on to state (p. 7), that a natural right may be regulated, 
modified, even suspended, by competent authority. This pleases 
Father Holaind little (p. 8). " 'Tis a subtle problem," quoth he, 
"abstract theory." I beg to diifer. The question is elementary; 
any one may see the point from a few illustrations. Every man has 
the natural right to be a proprietor ; but the Church has made {jure 
communi) a religious incapable of possessing by virtue of his solemn 
vow of poverty. Every man has the right to dispose of what is his 
own ; but the State restrains, nay, suspends this right in the case of 

^ Cf. T. Meyer, S. J., Insl. Jour. Nat, torn, i, n. 392 : " Tres numerantur societates 
intrinsece completse, societas domestica, civilis, religiosa (see here the State before 
the Church !), quippe quse singulse bonum sociale simpliciter humanum seu cunctis 
hominibus qua talibus commune aliquomodo ut finem prosequuntur ; esedem tamen 
simul ratione finis specie inter se difFerunt, et similiter diversis socialibus mediis 
utuntur." 



11 

minors and married women. Every man has the natural right to 
work ; but this right is regulated and restrained in women, children, 
and even adult men as far as the hours of work are concerned. 
Furthermore, the question is not mere theory.^ Whence comes it that 
so many writers hold that the State could not, without injustice, 
limit the hours of labor, man having the natural right, argue they, 
to use his forces as he pleases to his own advantage? They do 
not understand this principle which Father Holaind calls " abstract 
theory," and which may be termed : modification of natural rights by 
competent authority. Hence, the one who wants to " grapple with 
the difficulties which beset the live issues of the hour," and especially 
the question of education, must keep that principle before his mind. 

III. A capital objection against me is, that in my treatment of 
education I make no distinction between the State Christian and the 
State non-Christian (Father Holaind, p. 5). Most assuredly I make 
none, and no more do I make any between the family Christian and 
the family non-Christian, the individual Christian and the individual 
non-Christian. I repeat, I make no such distinction, and this is why : 

(a) Civil society and its inherent authority are in the natural 
order; the Church and its inherent authority are in the supernatural 
order. 

(6) Civil society and authority retain in a Christian people the 
character they derive from the natural order, they remain substan- 
tially what they were under the gentile dispensation, what they might 
have been in statu naturce puree. Such is the commonly received 
doctrine of theologians, proved by Suarez in his treatise, De Legibus, 
lib. Ill, c. 10, and especially c. 11, where he answers the question : 
" Utrum finis potestatis et legis civilis, prout nunc est in Ecclesia, 
sit alius a fine ejusdem potestatis et legis, ut in natura pura, vel in 
gentibus spectari potest." 

(c) Civil authority is co-extensive with the end of civil society as 
ecclesiastical authority is co-extensive with the end of religious society. 
Whatever is sac7rd by any title whatsoever falls under the religious 
authority, whatever is profane ^ falls under the political society. This 

1 See in the acts of the Catholic social Congress of Liege, 1890, the paper of Comte 
de Kuefstein: Beglementation de la duree du travail; also Oivilta Cattolica, 14^. Ser., 
vol. 2, p. 37, and G. Howell, Conflicts of Capitcd and Labour. 

2 The word "profane" is here used in the strict not the common sense, in the 
sense marked 1 at the word " profane " in Webster, 1884. 



12 

is the doctrine of Leo XIII in the encycl. Immortale Dei : " Quidquid 
est in rebus humanis quoquo modo sacrum, id est omne in potestate arbi- 
trioque Ecclesise ; csetera vero, quae civile et politicum genus com- 
plectitur, rectum est eivili auctoritati esse subjecta." Therefore tlie 
domain of the State comprehends all that of its nature is not sacred, 
all that is profane in the intellectual and moral as well as in the 
material region. Thus S. Thomas, 1-2, q. 96, a. 3, and Suarez, De 
Leg., lib. 3, c. 12, admit that the civil legislator may prescribe acts 
not only of justice bat of all the other moral virtues. 

{d) Hence the sovereign political power, the State, is ev^erywhere 
the same ; save the restrictions that written constitutions agreed to by 
men may impose, everywhere substantially the same, in infidel and 
protestant as in catholic nations. See here the very words of Suarez, 
I. c, n. 9 : " Potestas hsec ut nunc est in principibus christianis, in se 
non est major nee alterius naturae quam fuerit in principibus ethnicis." 
It extends to and is limited by what is 'profane; it is competent in the 
domain of the sacred, only by concession or delegation. This princi- 
ple is at the bottom of those agreements between States and the 
Church, known as Concordats. 

(e) Therefore the difference between the State non-Christian, the 
State Christian non-Catholic, and the State Catholic, consists not in 
the rights and attributes inherent in the State, but in the manner 
of exercise of those rights and attributes. The State non-Chris- 
tian in the execution of its rights follows the natural law, has no eye 
to the Gospel ; the State Christian non-Catholic follows the natural 
law and the Gospel, has no eye to the discipline of the Church ; the 
State Catholic follows the natural, the divine, the canonical laws. 
All this is fully explained by Leo XIII in the Encyclical Lihertas} 
In a word the Christian and Catholic State lives in union with 
the Church, the non-Christian and non-Catholic State in separation 
from the Church. However, to prevent exaggerations in this matter, 
I will add the observation of Suarez, De leg., lib. ill, c. 12, n. 11, 
that the acceptation by the State of the divine law, the union of State 
and Church, has two aspects, negative and positive. The negative is 
the obligation on the part of the State to make no enactments contrary 
to spiritual interests. The positive, which is often of counsel only, 
is the active concurrence of the State with the Church in procuring 

^ The reader will find a commentary on this encyclical in my Theologia Funda- 
mentalis, pp. 455-465. 



13 

and furthering spiritual interests.^ The theologians of the Vatican 
Council have made this doctrine their own. It comes simply to say- 
ing that in public as in private life, temporal interests should not be 
furthered at the expense and sacrifice of spiritual interests.^ 

(/) Moreover I call attention to this consideration, that between 
a non-Christian and a thoroughly Christian State there is an indefi- 
nite series of degrees and shades ; that a State may be regarded as 
Christian in one point and non-Christian in another. For proof of 
this, witness the condition of various European States to-day. As to 
this country, it may be said truly that it is Christian in a certain 
sense, that less than any country on earth does it hinder by enact- 
ments spiritual interests, that Christianity is an essential part of its 
laws. Many eminent judges have so afi&rmed in the verdicts of 
their courts. After Kent, the great Webster has held this view 
with energetic eloquence in one of his most famous speeches. 
This is not the place to give complete treatment to the question ; I 
must refer the reader for further study to writers who have treated 
it ex professo, pointing out to him especially the remarkable and 
impartial work of a French publicist. La Republique Am^rieaine, 
par Aug. Carlier, vol. iii, p. 470. 

{g) Let it be remembered, moreover, that it may be very diffi- 
cult to legislate on certain mixed matters pertaining at once to 
Church and State, and notably on education in a nation where many 
religious beliefs prevail. Of this no one doubts. Now such a con- 
dition of things, I mean multiplicity of beliefs and its consequences, 
may incline the State to waive the use of its rights in education, but 
it can never put those rights out of existence. 

^"Est observandum hanc relationem (potestatis et legislationis civilis ad bonum 
spirituale) posse dupliciter fieri : primo per positivam ordinationem, et sic regulari- 
ter erit in consilio, nisi ubi speciale prseceptum vel necessitas ad illani obligaverint. 
. . . Secundo intelligi potest per negationem tantum, sen per circumspectionem 
nihil statuendiper hanc potestatem, quod sit contrarium fini supernaturali, vel ejus 
consecutionem impedire possit, quse prndens cautio ex fide procedit, estque non 
tantum in consilio sed etiam in prsecepto maxime proprio Christiani et Catholici 
principis." 

^ " Sicut in negotiis privatis ita transeundum est per bona temporalia ut non amit- 
tantur seterna ; pari modo etiam in rebus et negotiis publicis felicitatem temporalem, 
quam societas civilis societatisque administratio per se et directe tanquam finem 
propositum habet, non ita quserere fas est, ut finis hominis ultimas ab oculis dimit- 
tatur." Schema de JEcdesia, not. 45. 



14 

In conclusion I ask, why in the matter of education certain writers 
clamor so loudly for a distinction between the Christian and the non- 
Christian State, whereas they have no word to say about the same 
distinction equally to the point, I should judge, between the Christian 
and the non-Christian family and parent. I said equally to the point ; 
I should say, much more to the point, for the relations of the natural 
and supernatural are closer in the family than in the State, for the 
simple reason that marriage is a Sacrament. 

I do not make nor admit the distinction between State and State 
my critics demand of me, because (1) it is unfounded, (2) it implies 
that the government of the United States is not Christian, an assump- 
tion I regard as untrue in its full extent. Are my critics conscious 
of the unenviable position to which they are driven by denying that 
the State has the right to educate ? 

IV. I am blamed for confusing Teaching with Education, and 
urging in favor of the right to educate arguments that avail only 
for the right to teach. The answer is easy and very clear. 

The words Teaching, Education, may be used in a strict or in a loose 
sense. In the strict sense, education is the formation of the heart, the 
will, the interior dispositions of the soul ; it is the imparting of virtuous 
habits. Teaching in the strict sense is the formation of the mind, 
the communication of truth. In a loose sense education and teaching 
equally mean the complete formation of man in general, or of man 
in any special avocation, of the Christian, the priest, the soldier, and 
the like. But it is ordinarily in regard to the special work done in 
schools that the terms teaching and education are used ; and in reference 
to this they are commonly employed almost indiscriminately. The 
reason of this is not hard to find. For it is well to remark that 
there are three sorts of schools. First come boarding-schools, col- 
leges and academies : in these the teacher is almost a substitute for 
the parents, in regard to the physical well-being of the pupils, 
their moral and religious training and their instruction. In another 
class of schools, more special in character, and devoted to such 
particular branches, as geography, history, music, drawing, etc., 
the teacher merely co5perates with the parent in a certain limited 
sphere, while the responsibility of the child's education rests wholly 
with the parent. Finally, there is the ordinary sort of school, where 
the child spends five or six hours each day. In this case, espe- 
cially as regards children of the lower class, the teacher takes the 



15 

parents' place as instructor and cooperates with them as educator. 
And though in these schools more time is allotted to instruction as 
such than to education as such, yet the work of education is of greater 
importance, because morality takes precedence of knowledge. This 
explains the indiscriminate use of the words instruction and education 
when people get to talking about schools ; it shows too how reasons 
that apply directly to instruction and only indirectly to education, or 
vice versa, are brought forward without the least regard for this dis- 
tinction. This I have not hesitated to do, where my context was 
so clear that misunderstanding of my meaning seemed impossible. 
Having carefully shown that the religious side of education is not 
within the province of the State, I proved that the State has a right 
to found schools, "to provide education in the letters, sciences, and 
arts," to inculcate the moral principles of the natural law, — in a 
word, to provide and to exercise authority over all that part of edu- 
cation which concerns the temporal welfare of human society. 
My meaning being thus perfectly clear from the entire context, 
the reader may judge, first, whether it is correct to say that the right 
of the State extends onl}^ to instruction and has nothing to do with 
education; and, secondly, whether it is just to force upon my words 
a meaning foreign to their obvious sense and then boast of having 
refuted what I evidently never meant to say. All this will be made 
clearer as we go on. 

lY. 

The Right of Individuals and Associations; 

I. With Suarez I have asserted (pp. 7, 8) that every individual has 
from nature the right to teach, being careful at the same time to add that 
this right is not uulimited but limited to the true and the good, not 
absolute but subject to competent authority, not unconditional but con- 
ditioned by capacity and worth on the part of the would-be teacher. 
• As proof of this assertion, I adduced the very purpose of teaching 
which is to develop the intellect by the communication of truth, and 
I argued that, since every man has the right to communicate truth 
and to speak, so has he the right to teach. It is Taparelli's argu- 
ment (Sagg'io teoretico, diss. Vil, not. 140). 

I am met with the plea that the argument may be admitted for 
teaching, but not for educating in the strict sense of the term (F. Ho- 



16 

laind, p. 6). — I answer: there is no essential difference between the forma- 
tion of the mind and that of the heart, if the point under consideration 
be the right to effect that formation. But let us exchange words and 
see what kind of argument we get. What is education ? The for- 
mation of character, the inculcation of virtue, the correction of faults 
and defects. But every man has the right to inculcate virtue on his 
neighbor, to correct his neighbor's faults. Among the works of 
spiritual mercy, we find not only the teaching of the ignorant, but 
also the correction of sinners, and if you should want to know what 
that implies, I refer you to Valentia, 2-2, disp. 3, quaest. 10. Cor- 
rection is " qualiscunque sermo quo quis vel monendo, vel repre- 
hendendo, vel hortando, vel rogando, vel quippiam iudicando, vel 
alia hujusmodi ratione nitatur proximum a peccato revocare et ad 
officium virtutemque traducere?" Is education anything else? 
Therefore every individual has the right to educate. 

But we have not yet done with this objection and the fallacy that lurks 
in it. The individual man, say my critics, has not the right to teach, 
much less to educate, because teaching, and especially education, sup- 
pose a certain jurisdiction (F. Holaiud, p. 7). — This argument reveals a 
sad confusion about right and the exercise of a right. I have the right 
to practice medicine, but I may not and can not be a physician 
except to those who will put themselves under my care. Just so I 
have the right to teach and to educate, but I can exercise the right 
only on those who have the goodness to take me as master. If the 
client I solicit is sui juris, his consent suffices to give effect to my 
right : thus the founder of a religious community gets his right 
made practical, the right, namely, to give a religious education to 
those who associate with him, by their consent. If my would-be 
client is a child, I must needs get the consent of his parents. Is my 
position plain ? Must I say in so many words, that when I assert 
for every individual the right to teach, I do not assert the right to 
take pupils by the collar and teach them willy nilly ? My right to 
teach does not imply a right to force myself on others, but does imply 
an obligation on the part of others not to hinder my giving education 
to those who are willing to accept my services as a teacher. So 
elementary is the distinction I have just drawn out that I had thought 
it enough when writing the pamphlet to hint it, trusting the keenness 
of my readers to see the point at a glance. I did hint it when I wrote 
on page 8: "Every individual has the right of teaching what he is 



17 

capable of teaching to whomsoever will accept his teaching/' and when 
(p. 22) I added, treating of parents in education, that parents have the 
right to choose the masters of their children. 

II, On the authority of Leo XIII I affirmed (p. 8), that the right 
of association is a right which men hold from nature. In whatsoever 
things they act individually, in those same they may act collectively. 
If Peter, Paul, and John can do business individually, why can they 
not combine their resources and energies for a more extensive and 
successful method of doing business ? If Peter, Paul, and John can 
pursue and cultivate knowledge individually, can they not unite their 
efforts and studies for a more extensive and useful cultivation of the 
sciences? It seems to me a truism, an elementary axiom of the 
first evidence. Applying this to education, I have argued that if 
twenty isolated individuals have the right to teach, they have the same 
right when united collectively. Now many individuals, putting their 
talents and efforts into a common fund for the pursuit of a common 
end, make up what is called a society, an association, a corporation. 
The logical consequence is that such an association has the right to teach 
just as well as individuals and under the same conditions. — There is 
nothing new in this process of reasoning ; on the contrary it has 
been made use of by all the defenders of religious congregations 
to prove their right to existence, to their special mission, what- 
ever it may be, to the possession of the means, financial and other- 
wise, necessary to these objects.^ I wonder that Father Holaind 
does net see this truth. Yet the denial of this elementary principle 
is in his pamphlet. Finding my list of factors concurring in educa- 
tion too long, he scratches "associations" from it (pp. 7, 21). 

III. I need not tarry to refute certain flashy, flimsy objections 
made by journalists, guided more by passion than by reason. How- 
ever, there is one to which I must advert, because it gives me the 
opportunity to point out a principle as dangerous as it is false. 

We are told that it is illogical to attribute to associations or moral 
persons the rights attributed to individuals or physical persons, since 
an association is only a fictitious being and can be called a moral person 
only by a legal fiction, by a courtesy of the law. Association a fic- 
titious being, association a person created by the laiv and depending on 
the lavj, is with many an axiom laid down as gospel. Now let us 

^ For instance see the paper of E. Father Sengler, S. J., in the Revue catholique des 
institutions et du droit, Janv. 1882. 



18 

see what underlies that. A collection of individuals, who combine 
their means and talents in view of a common end, is certainly some- 
thing real, something concrete, and not at all a fiction ; it is a body 
(the meaning of eorporoUon) made up of parts and members united 
by a common bond. Those members are free and intelligent 
beings ; that body acts, it has rights, it has duties ; hence it may 
be called a person. The bond that unites them is moral, and 
so the association is called a moral person. Since the right of 
association is anterior to positive legislation and is not a conces- 
sion made by law to men, no more than is the right to speak, to 
labor, it follows that an association or a moral person with its 
inherent rights and duties is not necessarily a creature of law. 
I grant that the law recognizes the association, and that it may 
endow it with privileges ; then it becomes a legal moral person, but 
that does not make it a mere figment. Remark well that I do not 
deny that there are in law fictitious beings of pure legal creation. 
For instance, if we consider society as something distinct from indi- 
viduals who compose it, we have an abstract being, an ens rationis, or 
less exactly a fictitious being. And if the State or the Church recog- 
nizes this ens rationis, we have a moral person which will be a crea- 
tion of the law.^ I do not deny it. What I assert is that the 
associations to which I attribute the right to teach, have their right 
to exist and to teach, by natural law, not merely by courtesy of the 
civil law. This suffices to make good my position. 

The axiom against which I am arguing is full of peril. It . 
gives a basis to all those European legists who are foes to relig- 
ious associations. From it they draw conclusions like the fol- 
lowing : donations and legacies to associations, which the law does 
not clothe with moral personality, are null and void, because of the 
absolute incapacity to receive and inherit in donees and legatees who 
have no existence before the law ; the State may divest associations 
of the civil personality formerly granted and then may seize their 
property which now belongs to nobody. These iniquitous conse- 
quences have been discussed and refuted by a learned professor of 
the University of Louvaiu, Mr. Van den Heuvel, in a work which 
has made a great sensation in the legal world, De la situation legale 
des Associations. Let us beware how we put false coin in circula- 
tion, even for the temporary needs of war ; — we might perhaps be 

^ See Cavagnis, Inst. jur. eccl, in, n. 342. 



19 

the very first to suffer from our action. Enough on this point. I 
do not stop to examine the strange proposition that an association 
cannot have greater right or more rights than the individuals that 
compose it. Has not civil society, the State, more rights than the 
citizens ? How about the right of legal punishment and of capital 
punishment ? 

V. 
The Right, the Mission, the Authority of Parents. 

At the start let me say that I am glad to find myself absolutely in 
agreement with Father Holaind as to the title of his pamphlet. He 
headed it " The Parent First," and I wrote " The parents are enti- 
tled (by the Creator) to be the first instructors of their children, 
themselves, or through teachers of their own choosing" (p. 10). 

I. I asserted the rights of parents, and I indicated the qualities of 
that right. I admitted that the right is very extensive, without, how- 
ever, being unlimited, since the teaching must be bounded by the true 
and the good. I have emphasized with LeoXIIT that the right is sacred 
and must be respected ; but I had to acknowledge that the right is not 
independent; so does Leo XIII in his Letter of June 26th, 1878, 
to the Cardinal Vicar. In that letter he teaches that the father has 
not the right to deprive his child of religious instruction, even should 
the civil law favor such a wish of the father, and that the case occurring, 
the school authorities should look to the spiritual welfare of the child. ^ 

I have pointed out the foundation on which the parental right 
rests, bringing forward a passage of S. Thomas, at once the briefest 
and clearest formula of doctrine on the question, in my judgment. 
Likely enough Leo XIII is of the same opinion, for he makes the 
same quotation in the late Encyclical Rerum Novarum.^ And yet 

^ " Se vi fossero genitori che o per malvagita di animo o molto piu per ignoranza 
e negligenza, non pensassero a chiedere per i loro figli il benefizio dell' istruzione 
religiosa .... non sarebbe un dovere da chi presiede alia scuola remediare all'altrui 
malizia o trascuranza ? " 

^ " Patria potestas est ejusmodi ut nee extingui, neque absorber! a republica possit, 
quia idem et commune habet cum ipsa liumana vita principium. Filii sunt aliquid 
patris, et velut paternse amplificatio qusedam personse ; proprieque loqui si volumus, 
non ipsi per se, sed per communitatem domesticam, in qua generati sunt, civilem 
ineunt ac participant societatem. Atque liac ipsa de causa quod tilii sunt naturaliter 
aliquid patris, antequam usum liberi arbitrii habeant continentur sub parentum 
cura. Quod igitur Socialistce, posthabita providentia parentum, introducunt provi- 
dentiam reipublicse, faciunt contra justitiam naturalem." 



20 

Father Holaind (pp. 8-12) thinks that I have not done enough. He 
puts the argument under four different forms, appeals to Grotius, 
Puffendorf, Blackstone, Kent, even to Justinian, Ulpian, Lycurgus. 
I have not a word to say anent all that, except quod ahundat non 
vitiat. 

II. I have asserted and proved (pp. 10, 16) that it is the duty of 
parents to give their children education, not education of an indifferent, 
vague kind, but a civic and Catholic education, that will make the chil- 
dren into good citizens and good Christians ; that this parental duty is 
strict and paramount, though by no means a duty of commutative jus- 
tice, as Father Holaind would hold (p. 10, line 35). Why, then, does he 
quote against me (p. 16), the decree of the Holy See and the American 
Hierarchy on neutral schools ? Where is the word of mine contrary 
to those decrees ? This mode of dealing deeply pains me, I confess, 
because those who have read only the pamphlet of Father Holaind 
are deceived by that mode of dealing as to my position. Has not a 
Catholic journal, as I remarked above, opposed to me the Encyclical 
Sapientiaf May not others think that I grant all power in educa- 
tion to the State only? There are rules of justice from which the 
most praiseworthy zeal dispenses no one. 

III. As to the authority of the parents, I have asserted and proved 
that parents never can lose it ; that, if the State establishes public 
schools, it is bound to take account of the reasonable wishes of parents, 
and allow them a legitimate share in the carrying on of such schools 
(p. 22). For this very reason I have said that primary public schools 
ought to be, not governmental as in some countries, but municipal as 
in this country, because the municipality more nearly and completely 
represents the families, and is the immediate emanation of them (p. 19). 
True, this point has not been attacked, but I have at heart to repeat 
it as it gives a very good understanding of the relations of the State 
and the family in the matter of education. 

YL 

The Right, the Duty, the Authority of the Church. 

When I came to treat this part, I found that I had either to spread 
over many pages, if I wished to be complete, or confine myself to the 
mere statement of general principles and indication of principal 



21 

proofs. This latter alternative was imposed on me by the very 
nature of my work. 

I. I asserted then that the Church is a teaching power — magis- 
terium. Father Holaind (p. 12) insists to add that the Church is also 
an educating power. I have no objection to that. Even Gnizot 
has written that the Church is " la plus grande Seole de respect." Now, 
frankly, is not all that Father Holaind says on this point so 
emphatically that he gives the impression that I have not said it, 
sufficiently indicated in my pamphlet? Again, quod abundat non 
vitiat. 

II. Father Holaind (p. 13) thinks me too hard on those who hold 
that the Church has received the direct mission to teach human sciences, 
and reminds me that those who so hold, find in the text, John, xvi., 
13, a corroboration to their interpretation of the text of St. Matthew, 
" Going, therefore," etc. Thanks for the information ; though to tell 
the truth, I was acquainted with this trifling plea, but did not think 
it worth noticing. However, since Father Holaind challenges, I will 
say, (1) that in the text of St. John supernatural truth is in question : 
" I have yet many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them 
now;" (2) the text deals with the teaching given by the Holy Ghost 
to the Apostles, and not with the teaching given by the Apostles to 
the world ; it deals, in a word, with the completion of Revelation : 
" But when he, the Spirit of Truth, is come, he will teach you all 
truth ; for he shall not speak of himself: but what things soever he 
shall hear he shall speak : and the things that are to come he shall 
show you." If this text is to be of any service to Father Holaind, 
he should make it prove that the Holy Ghost was sent to communi- 
cate to the Apostles human sciences. Can Father Holaind do it? 
I pray you avoid that kind of Exegesis that would cover us with 
ridicule in the eyes of the world. 

III. Father Holaind regrets (p. 13) that I have omitted to speak 
of the philosophical verities of the moral order, and that I have not 
given the Church the mission to teach them. This is not serious 
polemics. Turn to page 20 of my pamphlet. There I wrote, " her 
(the Church's) duty is to make known to man his relations to God, 
his end ; the rules which he must follow and the means which he 
must use to attain that end." Is not that the supernatural moral 
order, and does not the supernatural moral order comprehend the 
natural moral order? It surely does. So at least I was taught by 



22 

my regretted Master, Cardinal Franzelin, in his treatise, De divina 
traditione et scriptu7^a, p. 110 (P. edit.). I ask the impartial reader, 
was I bound to explain everything at length, especially when my pur- 
pose was only to sketch the main outlines of a very complex question 
in a limited pamphlet? I was addressing an enlightened audience, 
and I was counting and I still count on the intelligence and fairness 
of my readers. 

But, as Father Holaind calls my attention to this point, and as 
some persons seem not to understand truths of the most elementary 
kind, I shall here express myself very plainly. 

(a). The natural moral law is the foundation of the civil order (eco- 
nomical and political) as it is also the basis of the religious order itself. 

(b). The precepts of the natural law may be known naturally by 
the very light of reason, as S. Paul teaches in his epistle to the 
Eomans. But they are known more fully and perfectly by the light 
of revelation ; for revelation is necessary in order that these precepts 
should be known by all, easily, certainly, and without any mixture 
of error : ut ab omnibus expedite, firma certitudine et nullo admixto 
errore cognosci possint} 

(c). The principles of the natural law are the patrimony of all man- 
kind, which preserves and explains them ; and hence it is that on the 
fundamental questions both theologians and philosophers avail them- 
selves of the wisdom of nations. Still these truths are in a more 
special manner the patrimony of the Church to whose guardianship 
they were intrusted and who interpret them authentically. 

(d). It is the duty of the State to sanction the precepts of natural 
law and to determine its application as to the temporal good ; it is the 
duty of the Church to sanction and apply the same principles as to 
the spiritual good. Theft and adultery, for instance, may be punished 
at the same time by civil law, inasmuch as they are opposed to the 
temporal good of society, and by ecclesiastical law as opposed to the 
spiritual good. 

(e). The State, which is bound to sanction the principles of moral 
law, is consequently bound to inculcate them on the members of soci- 
ety ; the Church has a similar duty, but of a higher order, in regard 
to the faithful ; for these two authorities have both the mission to 
procure the moral education of men, though each one at a diiferent 
point of view. 

^ Cone. Vat. const. Dei Filius. 



23 

(/). To admit a system of moral principles grounded on nature, 
known by reason, the observation of which is necessary to the tem- 
poral good of society, and which the State, whatever it may be, must 
sanction, is not the same as to admit the so-called " morale civique, 
independente," The " morale civique " or " ind6pendente " is the 
one that some pretend to establish outside the first foundations of all 
justice and righteousness, without consideration for God as Creator 
and of his Providence, the eternal law, the last end of man, as it has 
been so well exposed by Leo XIII in the Encyclical Humanum 
genus} I repudiate such a system of morality as inefficacious, inade- 
quate and dangerous : it is impossible to separate either politics from 
morality, or morality from religion. I beg my opponents to read 
what I have written on the subject in my " Theologia fundamentalis." 

Let me be permitted to make here a final remark. Much is said 
of the knowledge of natural moral truths when it is question of 
education ; also, when the doctrine of the Church is explained against 
fideists and traditionalists ; and when it is question of the means of 
salvation among the heathen. Do those who make this discussion 
bear in mind the logical consequences which follow from their 
premises ? 

IV. I have asserted and proved (pp. 28 and 29) that the Church, 
by her divine constitution, has direct authority over religious instruc- 
tion, indirect authority over secular instruction. I added that the 
Church has varied in the enforcement of this authority according to 
time and place. I wish to remark here very explicitly that the 
Church has enforced in her sphere the system of compulsory edu- 
cation and imposed a minimum before the State had begun to do so. 
Here I transcribe, as one instance, a decree of the first provincial 
Council of Mechlin : " Since the poorer classes are often careless in 
the instruction of their children, they should be forced by the with- 
drawal of the alms usually allowed them for subsistence to send their 

^ " De officiis loquimur quse ab humana honestate ducuntur. Mundi enim opifex 
idemque providus gubernator Deus : lex seterna naturalem ordinem conservari 
jubens, perturbari vetans: ultimus hominum finis multo excelsior rebus humanis 
extra hsec mundana hospitia constitutus: hi fontes, hsec principia sunt totius justitise 
et honestatis. Ea si tollantur, quod Naturalistfe idemque Massones solent, continuo 
justi et injusti scientia ubi consistat, et quo se tueatur omnino non habebit. Et sane 
disciplina morum, quae Massonum familise probatur unice, et qua informari adoles- 
centem setatem contendunt oportere, ea est quam civicam nominant et solutam ac 
liberam; scilicet in qua opinio nulla sit religionis inclusa." 



24 

children to school. ... In order that schools may not seem to be 
established in vain, but be frequented with good results, it is the 
duty of the magistrates of each district to devise means whereby 
the attendance of children may be enforced, so long at least as they 
shall be ignorant of the Christian religion. The magistrates may 
exact this attendance by fines from those parents, who, after due 
monition, continue to neglect sending their children." ^ Is it not 
with some reason that a Catholic writer states that the principle of 
compulsory education, rightly understood, is a Christian principle?^ 

VII. 

The Right, the Duty, the Atjthoeity of the State. 

J. — Right. 

I. Unhesitatingly have I affirmed (p. 12) that the State has the 
right to teach, adding, however, very carefully, (1) that the right is not 
absolute ; the State any more than individuals may not teach error ; 
(2) — that the right is not exclusive ; the State's right does not mean 
the right to hinder others, and notably the family from teaching ; (3) — 
that the exercise of this right is subject to the moral law, which 
governs both States and individuals ; the State's right does not mean 
the right to squander the people's money in the building of useless 
schools, nor of schools indifferent and harmful. All this I have 
insisted on with a clearness, an emphasis such that my thought 
cannot be possibly mistaken, and I cannot permit any one to impute 
any other doctrine to me, be the imputation open or hidden. 

II. I proved the State's right by the following syllogism (p. 12) : 
" Civil authority has the right to use all legitimate temporal means it 
judges necessary for the attainment of the temporal common welfare. 
Now, among the most necessary means for the attainment of the 
temporal M'elfare of the commonwealth, is the diffusion of human 
knowledge. Therefore civil" authority has the right to use the means 
necessary for the diffusion of such knowledge, that is to say, to teach 
it, or rather to have it taught by capable agents." 

Father Holaind (p. 15) criticizes the major, the minor, and finds 
that the conclusion does not follow from the premises. Let us see. 

1 Tit. XVIII, c. 5 et 6 ; ap. De Earn, Syn. Belg., torn, i, p. 122. 

^ Pierre Pradi^, Rapports de la Religion et de la Politique, 12® note a mes Collogues. 



25' 

As to the major, namely, the State has the right to use all legiti- 
mate temporal means it judges necessary for the attainment of tem- 
poral common good, Father Holaind seems not to deny the principle. 
But in view of the application I make of that principle he asks 
what are the legitimate means and makes his objection hinge on 
that word. Pray look at page 12, line 23. Legitimate means 
are those " that trench on and wound no other right." Yes, there 
I have defined the term " legitimate." And yet Father Holaind 
goes on to ask me, do I consider as legitimate, measures opposed to 
the anterior and inalienable rights of parents ! I have answered No 
more than ten times. Father Holaind continues, " The doctor would 
answer that no right is infringed, because the parents are free to send 
their children to the government schools or to keep them at home. 
If so we are satisfied ; but let this qualification go on record." This 
time Father Holaind goes too far. Has he read my pamphlet ? If 
he has, why did he not see what is there printed in Italics (p. 28, 1. 4), 
so that the most distracted and prejudiced reader might not fail to see ? 
" Would answer ! " Good heavens, I have answered. And yet Father 
Holaind uses a dubitative and conditional form of speech of a nature 
to make his readers suppose that I sacrifice the family to the State, 
that I set no limit to the right of the State, but that Father Holaind 
is considerate and gracious enough to presume that in my heart's 
heart I do admit some limit. If I did not know how much 
must be allowed and pardoned to the partisanship of criticism, 
I should qualify most severely the proceeding of Father Holaind. 
I am content to point it out to the reader who realizes the necessity 
of fairness in important discussions, and to Father Holaind himself, 
who knows now that, by his trifling, a portion of the public has been 
impregnated with an absolutely false conception of my doctrine. 

The minor of the argument is not less displeasing to the Hev. 
Father. He would have much to say to it, but time failed him, he 
was in such a hurry to be on hand at St. Louis to counteract the baneful 
influence of my pamphlet on the archbishops. I am very sorry, in- 
deed. It would have been so interesting to know the opinion of the 
Rev. Father as to the importance of the instruction of the masses. 
True, further on (p. 20, 1. 27) he ventures to state that it is not absolutely 
correct to say that the welfare of the laboring classes depends on their 
knowledge of the three R's. That is a vague assertion, and I should 
want for it proofs, and proofs more convincing than those given by 



26 

Costa-Eosetti. Meanwhile, I maintain what I have said on this 
point, and I repeat it, making my own the words of Prof. Moulart, 
of the University of Louvain/ " Civil instruction, after religious 
instruction, is the first means of civilizing a people. The first duty 
of the public power is to favor and propagate knowledge. The State 
is bound to promote scientific, literary, technical or industrial train- 
ing, to safeguard its subjects against fraud and injustice by providing 
means whereby they can know persons and things, and know the 
laws that regulate relations between persons, the enjoyment and use 
of things and the exercise of rights." I maintain my proposition, 
that the social condition of the individual depends on the education 
which he has received, and which alone can fit him for most occupa- 
tions, even the lowest in society; that the agricultural, industrial and 
political condition of a people depends in great part on the intellec- 
tual culture of the citizens. 

And now for the conclusion : Poor logician that I am, it does not 
follow from the premises ! At best I might conclude that the State 
can help those who teach, but not that the State itself can teach. Let 
us look at this more closely. My argument proves that the State may 
use all honest, legitimate means which the State judges necessary for 
the diffusion of knowledge among the people. Therefore, if giving 
aid to voluntary teachers is considered by the State a necessary means 
to the diffusion of knowledge, the State can give such help. If the 
State judges that to be not enough, and thinks necessary the estab- 
lishment of schools by itself, the State can establish such schools. 
But, insists the Rev. Father, this proves at most that the State 
can give teaching, but not education. Excuse me, it proves both. 
Morality is not less necessary than knowledge. Does not S. Thomas 
teach that there is no virtue the acts of which the State may not 
prescribe, and Suarez, that " the end of civil law is the temporal 
happiness of the Commonwealth, which cannot be obtained without 
the observance of all the moral virtues ; hence, the civil law may 
prescribe in the domain of all the moral virtues." ^ 

But, enough. Until stronger objections are brought against me, I 
hold my argument to be apodictical. To this argument I added a 

^ L'Eglise et I'Etat, p. 467. 

''1-2, q. 96, a. 3. "Nulla est virtus de cujus actibus lex prsecipere non possit." 
De Leg., lib. iii., c. 12, n. 8. " Finis juris civilis est felicitas vera naturalis politicae 
civitatis ; haec autem obtineri non potest sine observantia orcinium virtutum moral- 
ium ; ergo in omnibus potest prsecipere jus civile." 



27 

cursory remark of minor importance, that the State necessarily teaches, 
if not in schools, at least in its laws and juridical verdicts. The Rev. 
Father answers that legislating and judging are not quite the same 
thing as holding school. I knew that. In order that no one might 
impute to me so childish a naiveU, I wrote, p. 12, "That the civil 
power does necessarily teach in oneway or another" when it legislates 
and judges.' The Eev. Father might very well have passed so 
secondary an observation, but he is wrong in calling it metaphorical. 
It is not in a metaphorical, but in a very proper sense, that divine law 
in Scripture is called Lux, Lucerna, Lumen, and that S. Basil says, 
Lex doctrix et magistra. 

III. In confirmation of my opinion I adduced (p. 13) the fact, that 
among, all Christian nations of all times the civil power has engaged 
in teaching without any opposition on the part of the Church. 

In so doing I have shown, thinks the Rev. Father, the extent of 
my erudition (pp. 15, 16), not the sharpness of my judgment; for 
(1) lam wrong in supposing that Christian princes have not essential 
rights more extensive than non-Christian princes, (2) I do not see that 
the princes of the Middle Ages may have received from the Church 
the power of founding schools, (3) I do not attend to the fact that 
the princes of past times gave to schools a Christian organization 
and accepted the authority of the Church.^ 

I answer to No. 1 : I have demonstrated that Christian princes 
have not larger powers than non-Christian princes. The Holy 
Oil that shone on Charlemagne's brow has nothing to do with 
the question, whatever may have thought some old French writers.^ 

'See Father Holaind's Pamphlet, p. 5, 1. 20; p. 16, 1. 3; p. 18, 1. 25. 

^"The brow of Charlemagne is glossy with the sacred unction," says Father 
Holaind, p. 5. The consecration was a religious ceremony instituted to call down 
God's blessings on the King and his family. It was a public acknowledgment that 
authority comes from God, and must be exercised for his glory ; it was also a lesson 
both to the prince and to the people : to the prince that he should govern according 
to the laws of justice; to the people, that they should be faithful and loyal. But it 
did not confer any prerogative. This latter signification is made evident by the history 
of Charlemagne himself. Pepin had been already consecrated by S. Boniface, but he 
felt the necessity of consolidating his dynasty, and therefore, as Pope Stephen II 
had come to implore the aid of the Franks, he was requested to give again to Pepin 
the sacred unction. On July 28th of the year 754, the Pope consecrated not only 
Pepin, but his wife, and his two children — Charles, then 12 years of age, and Carloman, 
aged 3 years. He blessed the nobles {Francorum proceres), and prohibited them under 
the pain of excommunication to ever elect a King sprung from the loins of any one 
else but Pepin. See Pertz, Scriptores, tom. xv, -De unctione Pippini regis. 



28 

The Rev. Father tries^ p. 18, to prove the contrary, but I do 
not see clearly his reasoning and I must turn him over to the tender 
mercy of better logicians, say of his brother Jesuit, Father E.A. Hig- 
gins. Here is his reasoning : " The end of the Church is the union 
with Christ and life everlasting. The end of the family is the pro- 
creation and education of children. Hence (!) the civil power can 
claim ampler rights when it is in union with ecclesiastical authority 
and acts under its direction." 

To No. 2 I answer : when we study the Middle Ages, the 
intimate relations of the two societies forces us at times to 
inquire, if the Church in certain of her actions acted by her 
proper inherent authority or by an authority borrowed from the 
State, and again to inquire if the State in certain of its actions 
acted by its own authority or by an authority borrowed from 
the Church. To resolve this double question, the essence of the two 
powers must be held in mind and it will be well also to ask from 
each, M^hat notion and what consciousness each had of its respective 
attributes. Just what I have done. First I have proved that the 
right to teach profane sciences is essentially within the natural domain 
of the State's rights ; then looking at facts, I have found that princes 
did exercise this right ; nowhere have I found that they believed that 
such right came to them from the Church. Doubtless they almost 
always petitioned for canonical institution, not as a condition of exist- 
ence but as a condition of privilege, a condition availing for degrees 
in the eyes of the Church : for it is a mixed matter.^ 

And now for No. 3. It was not because they gave to their schools 
a Christian organization that the princes had the right to establish 
schools ; but because they were Christian they made a Christian use 
of the right and submitted their schools to the legitimate inspection 
and guardianship of the Church. 

Moreover, I did not restrict myself to the Middle Ages 
and, had brevity not prevented, I would have adduced many 
modern facts. In the beginning of his Pontificate Leo XIII 
found in Rome so-called neutral schools established by the 
revolutionary municipality of that city. He wrote a letter 
to the Cardinal Vicar about the matter. Does he protest 
against the fact of the establishment of those schools? Does 

^See C. M. de Robiano, Dejure Ecclesice in universitates sludiorum. 



29 

he pretend that in the establishment of them the municipality 
has gone beyond its native attributes and powers ? There is not in 
the letter a word to justify such a supposition. What he does 
strongly protest against is the organization of those schools in which 
religion had not its proper part and place. In so doing Leo XIII 
did but apply to Rome the traditional policy of the Popes towards 
all lands. In our days almost all European governments have 
withdrawn more or less completely from the dominion of the 
Church, and all have set up some system or other of public schools. 
Now, where do you find the Holy See condemning the fact of the 
erection of such schools ? Nowhere. The Holy See has been con- 
tent with condemning the defective mode of 6rganization of those 
schools, where they were organized without religion ; in a word, the 
Holy See has denied to the State not the right to teach, but the right 
to teach wrong. In the Encyclical Immortale Dei, L6o XIII makes 
a strong appeal to Catholics to take an active part in the politics of 
their country, even where the constitution is rationalistic, and does 
not recognize the Church. He advises them especially not to neglect 
municipal politics. Now, why? Please attend : because schools are 
of the jurisdiction of municipalities, and Catholics should not neglect 
this most powerful means of assuring to their offspring a good 
education.^ On August 18th, 1886, the Holy Father made a con- 
cordat with the Prince of Montenegro, who is a schismatic. 
Naturally the question of schools was taken into account. The 
Sovereign Pontiff accepts that the Schismatic State shall establish 
schools for its Catholic subjects as well as for the others ; he insists 
that the religions teaching of the Catholic children shall be subject 
to the bishop ; and, moreover, that wherever the Catholics are in the 
majority the school teachers shall be approved by the ecclesiastical 
authority. 

ly. Finally, I brought (p. 14) to the support of my thesis the 
authority of some serious publicists of the day. I selected from 
Austria and Germany two Jesuits, Costa-Rosetti and Hammerstein ; 
from France, Mgr. Sauv6, who, for his knowledge of the positive 
science, and for the accuracy of his judgment, is recognized as a man 

^"Illud etiam publicae salutis interest, ad rerum urbanarum administrationem 
conferre sapienter operam, in eaque studere maxime et efficere, ut adolescentibus ad 
religionem, ad probos mores informandis ea ratione, qua aequum est Christianis, 
publice consultam sit." 



30 

of the first order ; from Italy, I chose Cardinal Zigliara, a Domin- 
ican. I might have added others; I regret, especially, the omission 
of the illustrious Bishop of Mayence, Mgr. Ketteler. But these 
were surely sufficient. 

Father Holaind slyly insinuates (p. 4) that these references deserve a 
relative confidence. Father E. A. Higgins, S. J.,^ is bolder ; he plainly 
tells the readers of the Catholic News that he has carefully looked up my 
references, and that of all the writers quoted by me not one gives to 
the State the right of education as I have formulated it, that is, the 
right to establish schools, pay teachers, prescribe programmes ; not a 
single one even holds my opinion to be probable. Evidently some 
one does not know how to read, or is lying to the public. That 
some one is either Father E. A. Higgins, S. J., or Dr. Bouquillon. As 
no one is judge in his own cause, I produce the documents and appeal 
to the public. Let its verdict be Father Higgins' punishment or mine. 

I have quoted Costa-Rosetti, Hammerstein, Sauv6, Zigliara. Here 
are the texts. Costa-Rosetti, Inst. Eth. et juris not., th. 175, p. 691, 
1st ed. : "Auctoritas civilis quidem soholas fundare et a se fundatas 
dirigere potest ; sed per se prohibere nequit ne cives ipsi scholas etiam 
publicas erigant, ab ipsis erectas ordinent et dirigant, quin tamen 
absolutam docendi libertatem concedere possit." — Hamraerstein, De 
Ecclesia et Statu, 1st ed., ii, 2, p. 98: "Concedimus ipsius (status) 
esse soholas fundare, si opus sit, ut parentes meliorem nanciscantur 
opportunitatem ad liberos instruendos;" item, iir, 3, p. 146 : " Soholce 
publicse turn ab Ecclesia tum a potestate civili institui possunt ; " 
again, in, p. 182: " Negari non potest, statui jura qusedam circa 
liberorum educationem et scholas competere. Ipsius enim est, sup- 
plere familiam. Hinc primo parentibus media offerre potest, ut 
melius et efficacius educationi provideant. Quod facit scholas 
fundando et dotando secundum parentum necessitates et vota." — 
Sauve, Questions Sociales, c. 10, p. 269-271 : L'fitat a de lui-raeme 
le droit d'enseigner . . . ce qu'il est licite de communiquer h d'autres. 
Oui, I'etat a le droit d'ouvrir des icoles, qui, sans pr6j u d icier aux droits 
de I'Eglise, a ceux des families et des indi vidus, peuvent ^tre necessaires 
ou utiles an bien social, dont I'^tat est juge. . . . Entendu de la 
sorte, le droit d'enseigner peut-il ^tre raisonnablement d6ni6 k I'^tat ? 
Ne serait-ce pas lui refuser le droit de communiquer k d'autres ce qui 
est bon et utile, et m^me d'accomplir ce qui pent 6tre pour lui un 

1 Catholic News, Dec. 16, 1891. 



31 

devoir? . . . Ma th^se est done celle-ci: Le pouvoir civil a ^t6 
investi par Dieu du droit de procurer le bien commun tempore!, et 
par la meme de favoriser et d'ouvrir au besoin des ecoles qui con- 
tribuent k ce bien. ... La these oppos^e a la n6tre qui refuserait 
a F6tat tout droit d'enseigner ne nous pamtt pas probable." — Zigliara, 
Fhil. Mor., lib. ii, c. 1, a. 5, n. 7 : " Statui jus simul et officium 
iuesse procurandi media aptiora ad educationem turn mtelledualem 
turn moralem, negat profecto nemo. Cum enim in societatem 
civilem formandam familise conveniant, ut auxilia a communitate 
habeant, quse solse aut nullo modo aut nonnisi imperfecte in promptu 
habere possunt, necesse est ut de jure et officio socialis auctoritatis 
sit ilia media aptiora suppeditare." — Cavagnis, Instit. jur. publ. ece'L, 
III, n. 89, p. 59 : " Facultatem statui civili scholas instituendi nemo 
unquam denegavit." 

Is comment needed ? Let not Father E. A. Higgins say that those 
writers mean teaching, not edueation : they speak of schools and, 
therefore, of education, as well as teaching, and at any rate they 
use expressly the word education. Let not Father Higgins say that 
those writers allow no probability to my thesis ; it is to his they give 
no value whatsoever ! Hammerstein and Costa-Rosetti did not even 
deign to discuss his opinion ; Sauv6 expressly says it is not pro- 
bable; Cavagnis and Zigliara assert that nobody ever taught it. 
Let not Father Higgins hereafter say what he has said. But let me 
say that Father E. A. Higgins has given to the world an instance 
of audacious negation in the face of truth such as I have never met 
with. To break down my thesis he would make me a forger. I 
resent it. 

V. It is not only theologians I have quoted in favor of my thesis, 
but also the Dogmatic Commission of the Vatican Council. 

It is sought to weaken the force of this authority by the statement 
that in chapter XV of the schema and in note 47, which is the 
explanation of the chapter, there is no question whatever of education 
but only of instruction, no question of the right to teach, that is to 
build schools, employ masters, prescribe programmes, but only of the 
right to provide (^'providere) for the instruction of youth, that is to 
aid, stimulate and supply in cases the defect of parents. 

The force of the schema cannot be evaded by such artifices. In 
the text of the schema it is question of schools, and therefore of edu- 
cation as well as instruction. Moreover, education is expressly named 



32 

in the schema. Besides, to provide for the instruction of youth means 
not only to aid and encourage others in the giving of such instruc- 
tion, but to give instruction directly, just as to provide food means 
not only to aid those who furnish it but to give it directly and at 
first hand. The context of the schema is absolutely opposed to the 
fanciful and Byzantine interpretation that is fastened on it by my 
opponents. The authors of the schema warn us that the actual con- 
dition of things makes necessary an exposition of the principles that 
concern the instruction and education of the youth in schools.^ Then 
they take note of that error that gives to the State alone all right and 
discretion over schools.^ To this error they oppose the doctrine to be 
held by Catholics, viz. : that the Church has the right to see to it that 
Catholic children are trained in the principles of faith and Christian 
morality.^ But to refuse to the State the exclusive right of teaching is not 
to refuse it the right to teach, and to grant the Church the right to 
superintend the religious and moral education of Catholic children is 
not to grant the Church the right to superintend, much less to mon- 
opolize, the civic teaching and education of these same children, and 
this is precisely what the theologians hasten to state in the most 
explicit terms.* 

VI. Before entering upon the study of the right of the State to 
teach, page 11 of my pamphlet, I threw out a previous consideration 
in these words : " We ask if the State has the special and proper right 
of teaching human knowledge. We say special and proper right, for 
there can be no question of a vague and general right ; it were 
unreasonable to refuse to the State that which is granted to every 
legitimate association." Thereupon the Rev. Father E. A. Higgins, 
S. J., actually says that this previous remark is all the argument I 

^ " Declarationem distinctam quoad institutionem et educationem in scholis." 
Not. 47. 

^ " Contendunt scholas omnes direction! ac arbitrio solius potestatis laicae subji- 
ciendas esse, ita ut auctoritas Ecclesiae ad providendum religiosae institutioni et 
educationi juventutis christianae omnino impediatur." Cap. XV. 

'"Ab omnibus agnoscendum esse jus et officium quo Ecclesiae pervigilat ut ju- 
ventus catholica, imprimis vera fide et Sanctis moribus rite instituatur." Cap. XV. 

*"Tum in expositione errorura, turn in affirmatione veritatis, non negatur jus 
potestatis laicae providendi institutioni in Uteris ac scientiis ad suum legitimum 
finem, ac proinde etiam non negatur eidem potestati laicae jus ad directionem schol- 
arum, quantum legitimus ille finis postulat. Non asseritur potestati ecclesiasticae 
velut ex divina constitutione consequens auctoritas ad positivam directionem schol- 
arum, quatenus in iis litterae et scientiae naturales traduntur." Not. 47. 



33 

have for the State's right, he puts this pretended argument in forro, 
declares it a caricature and bids me go to school to learn logic. 

He has set up a man of straw and knocks him down. Again I 
appeal to the fair minded reader and beg him to give verdict. I 
have gone to school many years ago, to the school of Franzelin, 
Patrizzi, and Ballerini, S. J. ; to that same school I go as often as I 
can. But Father Higgins' school ! No, I hie me not thither, it is a 
school of deceit. And now shall I tarry to justify — not my argu- 
ment, I have done that just now in answering Father Holaind's 
objections to my syllogism — but a simple preliminary observation 
made by the way in one line? I will merely say that I am not the 
first who has made this observation, and that it has been advanced in 
favor of the Church, especially in lands where the Church is not recog- 
nized as a perfect society. If Father E. A. Higgins, S. J., has read, as 
he affirms, the writers I have quoted, he may have read in Ques- 
tions Sodales, p. 275, of Mgr. Sauv6, formerly pontifical theologian 
in the Council of the Vatican, and first Rector of the University 
of Angers, the following words : " I shall prove in a moment 
that the right to teach belongs naturally to every individual and 
legitimate association endowed with the 'requisite ability for the 
exercise of the right. Now, what an individual and an association 
may do in this regard, why should not the State do ? Why and 
on what pretense will you refuse to the State a natural right that 
belongs to the simple individual and to an association inferior to the 
State ? The State, the sovereign, be he one or multiple, may be as 
able, oftentimes abler to give teaching than simple individuals. What 
reason is there then why you should object to the State's teaching 
those who are willing to take it for a teacher, if it offers all reason- 
able guarantees and does not teach against the order established by 
God." Father E. A. Higgins, S. J., whose name is attached to no great 
scientific work that I know, may apply to Mgr. Sauv6, author of first 
class works, the epithets with which he has honored me, may bid him 
go back to school ! Here I drop the Rev. Father. May the reader 
excuse me for wasting on him so much of his and my time. I should 
not have stopped to answer his unfair criticism had it not been signed 
with a name, the religious affixes of which attached to the criticism 
credit in the eyes of Catholics. 

VII. I come back to ray original opponent. Father Holaind (p. 
16, 1. 15) asks what sort of school can a State that ignores revelation 



34 

set up, and he answers, the best it can establish are neutral schools, 
and neutral schools are condemned. This answer is incomplete and 
too easy. 

In turn I answer, first by asking Father Holaind what kind of 
education can an immoral and free-thinking parent give his child ; 
and does Father Holaind deny all right to educate to such a parent ? 

Secondly, I answer that the Father's argument proves, perhaps, that 
the non-Christian State is not qualified to exercise over Christians its 
rights in the matter of education, but does not prove that the non- 
Christian State has not the right to teach. 

But this is not enough, and I answer, thirdly, that the non-Chris- 
tian State may exercise its right of teaching towards its . Christian 
subjects by establishing denominational schools ; the non-Christian 
State may do for Catholics what Christian States have done for 
Mahometans. Do not bishops, priests, and laymen in the United 
States earnestly ask for denominational schools? Moreover, if the 
State non-Christian will not grant denominational schools, he may 
enter into some compromise whereby on the one hand its neutral 
position towards all religions may be maintained, and yet on the other 
hand the demands of the- various denominations as to religious in- 
struction may be safeguarded. 

I answer, fourthly, that if the neutral school is condemned on 
principle, it does not follow, after learned theologians and canon- 
ists, that in a peculiar condition of political affairs the State is abso- 
lutely prohibited from establishing schools not religious, schools 
negatively indifferent. Such is, for instance, the doctrine of Mgr. 
Cavagnis, Professor in the Pope's Seminary and Consultor of 
the S. G. of extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs, the very Con- 
gregation charged with the questions of the relations, of Church 
and State; p. 78, n. 128, vol. iii of the work already referred 
to, he says : " Etsi nuuquam liceat nisi per accidens ex erronea 
conscientia malum facere, ut esset constituere scholam acatholico 
spiritu imbutam, tamen licet aliquando a bono alias obligatorio absti- 
nere, cum nempe id sive physice sive moraliter impossibile est, seu 
prgestari nequit absque gravioribus malis, Schola autem nega- 
tive se habens quoad religionem est tantum omissio boni et non 
niali positio." ^ Let it be understood that I am here speaking of the 
establishment of schools by the State, not of the use of such schools 
by the parents. Be the State reprehensible or not in establishing 



35 

schools negatively indifferent, more or less dangerous, the duties of 
Catholic parents remain those indicated in the Third Council of 
Baltimore, n. 198, and in the Instruction given by the Holy See, 24 
Nov., 1875 : "Sacra Congregatio non ignorat talia interdum rerum 
esse adjuncta, ut parentes catholici prolem suam scholis publicis com- 
mittere in conscientia possint. Hoc autem non poterunt, nisi ad sic 
agendum sufficientem causam habeant; ac talis causa sufficiens in 
casu aliquo particulari utrum adsit, nee ne, id conscientise ac judicio 
Ordinariorum relinquendum erit ; et tunc ea plerumque aderit,'quando 
vel nulla prsesto est schola catholica, vel quae suppetit parum est 
idonea erudiendis conditionis suoe .... adolescentibus. Tunc autem 
ut scholse publicse in conscientia adiri possint, periculum perver- 
sionis cum propria ipsarum ratione plus minusve nunquam non 
conjunctum, opportunis remediis cautionibusque fieri debet ex prox- 
imo reraotum." ^ 

II. — Mission. 

Let the reader be patient. I have only a few words to add on the 
mission of the State in education. 

I. Before explaining my views, I thought it well to lay down 
in the pamphlet the traditional theory of the duties of the State 
(p. 18). I had to warn my readers against two opposite errors, 

^ Mgr. Sauv^ is not so explicit and furnishes a very good example how prudent 
we should be in deducing conclusions from general principles. On page 259 of his 
work already referred to, I find these words : " Un gouvernement ou un souverain qui 
presiderait aux destinees d'un peuple divis^ de croyances, ne pourrait-il pas licite- 
ment, non par indifference doctrinale ou impiete, mais sous I'empire de necessites 
urgentes et pour eviter de plus grands maux, ouvrir, par exemple, telles ecoles oi 
seraient regus des ^l^ves professant des cultes divers et dont les maitres devraient, 
dans I'interet de la paix et de I'ordre, s'abstenir de parlerpour ou contre la religion ? 
Je suppose, pour bien me faire comprendre, une soci^te ravagee a tel point par 
I'erreur et I'impiete que le gouvernement, si chretien qu'il soit, ne puisse etablir, vu 
Vetat pervers des esprits, des ecoles ou la vraie religion soit enseign^e sous ses 
auspices, ni meme des ecoles confessionelles ; et je suppose d'un autre c6td que les 
dcoles dues S, I'initiative privde ne soient pas suffisantes ; I'^tat en une telle situation 
pourrait-il, /azt^e de mieux, crainte de pire, fonder des ecoles dans lesquelles les maitres, 
par raison de prudence, devraient s'abstenir de parler de religion ? Telle est ma 
question. Je la pose et je ne la resous pas." One need not be a prophet, however, 
to conjecture how he would answer, if he were put to it. Here I wish to recall a 
sentence of my pamphlet, page 31 : " You have only to apply to education those 
general principles by which are solved the questions of liberty, of worship and tol- 
erance of social evils." 

3 



36 

the error of those for whom the State is only a policeman, the 
error of those for whom the State is a parent. Those two errors, 
pregnant with conclusions affecting the whole social life of man, find 
even among Catholics many upholders. Father Holaind knows this 
as well as myself; or, if he did not, he might have learned it from 
an article of Father Caudron, S. J., in the Revue Catholique des Insti- 
tutions et du droit of January, 1891. To those two errors I opposed 
the doctrine of S. Thomas, lib. i, c. 15, de Reg.prino. I should have 
given the text, so luminous is the doctrine of the great teacher. But 
it is within easy reach of my clerical readers. Had I not written my 
pamphlet before the publication of the Encyclical Rerum Novarum, I 
should have quoted from it that passage which refers to the duty of the 
State ; it holds as good for education as for labor. I now quote the 
text : " Per quos civitas regitur, primum conferre operam generatim 
atque universe debent, tota ratione legum atque institutorum ; scilicet 
efficiendo ut ex ipsa conformatione atque administratione reipublicae, 
ultro prosperitas tam communitatis quam privatorum efflorescat. Id 
est enim civilis prudentise munus, propriumque eorum, qui prsesunt, 
officium. Nunc vero ilia maxime efficiunt prosperas civitates, morum 
probitas, recte atque ordine constitutae familise, custodia religionis ac 
justitise, onerum publicorum tum moderata irrogatio, tum aequa par- 
titio, incrementa artium et mercaturse, florens agrorum cultura et si 
quae sunt alia generis ejusdem, quae, quo majore studio provehuntur, 
eo melius sunt victuri cives et beatius." Finally, wishing to show 
that on this fundamental point (the mission of the State) Catholic 
teaching was in harmony with the American idea, I quoted from the 
preamble to the Constitution of the United States (p. 14). All this 
is pure waste in the eyes of Father Holaind. 

IT. As to the functions of the State, I accepted the division 
into functions essential and functions accidental. And to show 
that theological and political science were in harmony on this 
point, I quoted on the one side Mgr. Cavagnis, on the other side an 
American writer, Mr. Wilson, and two employes of the government. 
Three, that is all. Waste of erudition, thinks Father Holaind. 
Mind you, I quote three on a controverted point to show that 
Catholic theologians and political writers are at one. On a point 
that no one among Catholics controverts. Father Holaind (pp. 8-10) 
allows himself the luxury of Grotius, Puffendorf, Blackstone and 
Kent, of Justinian^ Ulpian, Lycurgus ! Yet it is I that play the 



37 

charlatan, beat the drum, display erudition, and waste my powder in 
harm.less fireworks ! 

III. I have affirmed and proved (p. 19) that the State is invested 
with a mission to teach human knowledge. Father Holaind ex- 
claims, (p. 13) with some excitement : " Where, when, from whom 
has the State received such a mission ? " Why, dear Father, the State 
has received the mission from God, when God created man a social 
being, just as the parents receive their mission to be the educators of 
their children, when God grants them children ; or rather, they 
received it once for all, when God created man, male and female, 
and commanded them to increase and multiply. 

lY. While admitting in the State a mission to teach, I declared 
(p. 19) that the mission was an accidental function, supplying the insuffi- 
eieney of individuals; that the State is not bound to exercise it in all 
circumstances ; that the State can and should exercise it only when 
necessity or utility demands the State's intervention. By that dis- 
tinction, utility or necessity, I applied to teaching what is applied by 
all to the other accidental functions of government, post-offices, tele- 
graphs, roads, &c, and I wished to be aloof from those who admit the 
intervention of the State in such matters only in cases of absolute 
necessity. Father Holaind thinks, perhaps, that to admit the inter- 
vention of the State for cases where the intervention is useful is to 
admit it for cases where it is not useful. So he interprets ray thought ; 
for he says, p. 14, 1. 28 : " that is, the State may establish schools, even 
when the public could do without them," and he quotes a text of 
Jansen to the effect that the State should observe distributive justice 
and not favor one class of citizens at the expense of another ! 

III. — Authority. 

I. I have asserted the right of the State to educate ; but at the 
same time, I have carefully determined the object, the limits of 
this authority, and the conditions within which the State must exer- 
cise it. Again and again have I said that this authority is not 
absolute, nor arbitrary, nor exclusive of the Church and the family, 
but that in the divine plan these three authorities should combine 
their efforts for the common good of humanity. I beg the reader to 
read again this important passage of the pamphlet, pages 22-28, and 
to judge if I have made all necessary reservations and if they are to 



38 

be excused wlio attribute to me the doctrine of the omnipotence 
of the State and quote against me passages from the encyclicals 
where Leo XIII proclaims against the Socialists that the State 
may not invade the family and thrust aside the parent to take 
his place. 

II. As to the argument by which I have proved the authority of 
the State, it is reducible to this : this authority is included in that gen- 
eral authority with which the State is invested for promoting the com- 
mon good, guaranteeing to each man his rights and preventing abuses. 
Father Holaind finds (p. 19) that this argument proves too much, 
and, therefore, proves nothing ; for it would prove, he says, that the 
State has the right to invade our kitchens and prescribe our eating 
and drinking ; and so the good father sends me to Utopia, Saleiito, 
Icaria. 

The argument ab absurdo is a weapon of little effect at times, 
of very careful handling, of some danger to the fencer. If Father 
Holaind has read the Encyclical Rerwn Novarum since he wrote 
that hasty pamphlet of his, he must be sorry that he tried to 
fence with that treacherous weapon. Let us examine the reason- 
ing of Leo XIII in the question of labor. Major: "Eis qui 
imperant videndum ut communitatem ej usque partes tueantur." 
Minor: " Atqui interest salutis cum publicae tum privatae. . . . 
validos adolescere cives, juvaudse tutandaeque, si res postulat, civitati 
idoneos." Conclusion: "Quamobrem .... si valetudini noceatur 
opere immodico, nee ad sexum setatemve accomodato, plane adhi- 
benda certos intra fines vis et auctoritas legum." I have reasoned 
in the question of education exactly on the same line as the Pope 
in the question of labor. If the culinary objection of Father 
Holaind has any force, it hits the Ploly Father more directly 
than it hits me ; for good victuals are surely of the highest import- 
ance to the health of the growing citizen. But I hasten to assure 
Father Holaind that he is guilty of no irreverence, because his 
objection is of no account, and Leo XIII has quietly brushed 
it aside with three little words, certos intra fines, which I 
took the liberty of italicising in the quotation. He explains 
the three little words thus : " quos fines eadem, quse legum poscit 
opem, causa determinat, videlicet, non plura suscipienda legibus, 
nee ultra progrediendum quam incommodorum sanatio, vel periculi 
depulsio requirat." I had made precisely the same observation : we 



39 

may grant to the State what is reasonable and possible without grant- 
ing to it what is unreasonable and impossible. At any rate does not 
the State busy itself within reasonable limits with the material wel- 
fare of the citizens ? Does it not inspect food, meats, drinks, the 
sanitary conditions of homes, the justness of weights and measures 
and a thousand other matters ? Why then give out exclamations of 
holy horror when you are told that this same authority, that does all 
those things without a protest from you, can protect the intellectual 
and moral life of the children of the people by imposing a minimum 
of instruction ! 

Oh ! says Father Holaind (p. 20), the State can interfere only when 
a public wrong has been committed and the judge takes cognizance of 
it. " The fact is that all those matters are relative . . . requiring 
State intervention only when there is a public wrong committed and 
the existence of that public wrong must be determined by the judge 
on the individual merits of the case." Will Father Holaind please 
understand the distinction between the legislative and the judiciary? 
The existence of a social necessity, viz., the fact that some parents 
neglect the education of their children, may induce the legislator 
to remedy the defect by a general law. After the promul- 
gation of the law the judge sees to its execution by taking 
cognizance of individual breaches of the law, and inflicts punish- 
ment as the gravity of the case requires. But the judge does not 
make the law, he applies it. If it is difficult for the legislator to 
foresee all eventualities and predetermine every detail, it is perhaps 
still more perilous to leave all to the discretion of individuals, even 
of executive magistrates. 

III. Finally Father Holaind expresses the wish that I had dis- 
cussed the reasons adduced by Costa-Rosetti against compulsory edu- 
cation. I have not done so, because I had provided against them in 
my pamphlet, and I will not do so because some of them, even with 
the approbation of so excellent an author as Costa-Rosetti, seem to 
me unworthy of discussion before the people of the United States. 
For instance, the instruction of the masses in their rights and 
duties in order that the observance and administration of justice be 
made more easy is one of the arguments in favor of compulsory edu- 
cation : Costa-Rosetti objects that this argument is suggested by sloth 
on the part of the magistrates, and that it must not be forgotten that 



40 

magistrates are for the people and not the people for the magistrates. 
Here are his own words : " hoc argumentum potius ex molestia 
magistratuum quam ex prosperitate publica repetitur, ita ut inde illi 
solum merito commoveri possint, qui tenent cives esse propter magis- 
tratns, non magistratus propter cives : propter quos si magistratus ex- 
istant, hi iiicommoda subire debent, quae sine comparatione minora sunt 
quam onera gravissima civium, per quae magistratus se ab molestiis lib- 
erare possunt." What are those onera gravissima ? Remember that the 
State by making education compulsory and demanding a minimum of 
instruction does not impose any burden on good citizens, for we sup- 
pose the State to be reasonable in such legislation ; it imposes, there- 
fore, a burden only on the bad citizens. I do not see that anything 
more can be objected to the law of compulsory education than to any 
other law that sanctions our natural obligations. 

Conclusion. 

In my pamphlet I purposed to prove, and, I take it, have proved 
that education belongs to individuals isolated and collected, to the 
family, to the State, to the church ; to these four together, to none of 
them exclusively. Such is the theoretical doctrine. The practical 
application of it demands the combination, more or less harmonious, 
of these four interested parties in the work of tlie schools. 

Objections have been made to my thesis — not one, however, that 
has not been foreseen and guarded against in my first pamphlet. 
Notwithstanding this, I have thought it advisable to scatter the 
clouds and mists that have been cast about me, and to put the truth 
in a new and clearer light. I have proved in particular that the 
objections drawn from the distinction between instruction and educa- 
tion, the Christian and the non-Christian State, have been urged 
against me without justice. I have shown the solidity of all the 
arguments which I deduced from principle, law and fact. I owed 
this defence to myself, to the institution of which I have the honor 
of being a member, to the distinguished persons who have advised me, 
to the Catholic people of this country Avho cannot afford to be led 
astray. 

In the fulfilment of this duty I have been moved by two sen- 
timents. On the one hand a sentiment of satisfaction and confidence 



41 

that I am in the truth, that there is little strength in the reasoning 
of my adversaries. On the other hand a sentiment of pain caused 
by the controversial methods of my adversaries, methods to which 
I have been unaccustomed, which I had not expected. I spoke of the 
right to educate : I am met with the question of the organization of 
the schools. I upheld the right of the State : this is taken to mean 
that I deny the right of the family. I spoke of a determinate right 
of the State and carefully fixed its limits : it is inferred from this 
that I preach State omnipotence — in a word, neither my explanations 
nor my reservations, emphasized by the use of italics, have received 
the slightest notice. I took care to back each statement with the 
authority of Catholic writers of acknowledged standing : to this 
comes the printed reply that not one of those writers looked on my 
opinion as even probable ! And yefc, I had taken my stand in the 
serene region of pure science. No allusion, no imputation, no quali- 
fication that could wound is to be found in my pamphlet.^ With St. 
Jerome I could say, "Asked by my brothers what I thought, I gave 
my answer, taking from no one the right to think for himself : " In- 
terrogatia fratribus quid nobis videretur, respondimus, nulli prsejudi- 
cantes sequi quod velit." ^ Whence all this impassioned opposition, 

^And yet the American Ecclesiastical Review writes (p. 76) that my essay "bears, 
in the light of existing facts, an aggressive character ; " that I threw down the glove, 
and that " I have given sign of being an adversary, in deed if not in words." An 
adversary to whom ? Aggressive in what ? Those " existing facts " — are they mine ? 
I have made merely an abstract and impersonal exposition of principles. And even 
had I made a challenge, the one who took up the glove should have fought with 
lawful weapons. I dedicate to such critics the following words which E. F. De Smedt, 
S. J., Superior of the Bollandists, pronounced December 6th, 1885, in the Catholic 
Congress of Eouen : " I do not hesitate to put fairness in the first line of the duties 
of Catholic writers in discussion with co-religionists. . . . What name would you 
give to the practice of a writer who, to refute more easily an opinion that displeases, 
presents it under an appearance that disfigures and falsifies it out and out ; who 
strains wording so as to make the author say the thing which he did not say, nay 
the contrary of what he did say ; who attributes to him hidden thoughts, intentions, 
which are far from his mind ; who masks explanations and restrictions essential to 
the real bearing of his propositions ? What would you say of the tactical craft that 
strives to take the discussion from the main field of the contest and bring it to a 
corner of very subordinate importance, where an easier victory is hoped for and the 
onlooker is deceived into the belief that the enemy has been routed. All this, I 
grant, may be done unconsciously ; none the less does it shock the calm and disin- 
terested witness of the strategy, and above all him who is the victim," 

^Apol. adv. Buf., lib. 1. 



42 

these insinuations, these suspicions, this proems de tendanoe, even these 
calumnies ? Was the light so dazzling that it hurt the eyes of some ? 
However that may be, I forgive those who have so forgotten them- 
selves as to use against me unfair weapons. I offer to their medita- 
tion the following words of Leo XIII : " Illud in controversiis 
agitandis cavendum est, ne modus transiliatur quem sequitatis carita- 
tisque leges prsescribunt, neve temere insimulentur vel in suspicionem 
adducantur, viri cseteroquiu Ecclesise doctrinis addicti." ^ 



^Epist. Licet multa, 3 Aout, 1891. 



EDUCATION: 



TO WHOM DOES IT BELONG? 



SECOND EDITION, 



WITH 



A Rejoinder to Critics. 



By the Rev. THOMAS BOUQUILLON, D. D., 

■ProfesBor of Moral Theology at the Catholic University of America, Washington, D. C. 



BALTIMORE: 

JOHN MURPHY & CO 
1892. 



